Post-9/11 FBI Offices

The Post-9/11 FBI
Bricks and Mortar to Do the Job

The new Houston FBI Office was dedicated November 4. According to Director Mueller, the new building includes more room for our employees and law enforcement partners, more secure space, and stronger technology to help us meet our mission.

11/06/09

You probably know that the FBI has transformed itself since 9/11 to be more proactive and preventive when it comes to terror and crime, becoming—really for the first time in its history—an intelligence-driven organization.

But that overhaul has been more sweeping than you might expect. It’s had a ripple effect across the Bureau, impacting virtually every facet of our work—not just our investigations and intelligence operations, but also our recruiting, training, security, organizational structures, partnerships, records management, information technology, finances, forensics, and much more.

Our new Chicago Office, which opened in 2006, earned the prestigious Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design for Existing Buildings Platinum award, given out by the United States Green Building Council, for operating efficiently and minimizing its impact on the environment.

There’s one other highly visible and important part of our operations that has undergone a similar shift: our brick and mortar facilities, particularly our 56 field office buildings across the country.

Assistant Director Patrick Findlay

Our field reconstruction efforts actually started following the Oklahoma City bombing but took off after 9/11 and all the changes that came with it. “We hired more agents and analysts, we established more Joint Terrorism Task Forces, we created new Field Intelligence Groups, so we simply needed more room for our people and partners and workplaces more conducive to sharing information,” said Assistant Director Patrick Findlay of our Facilities and Logistics Services Division. That means large, open spaces; more Top Secret computer connectivity; and more and larger Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs), where our agents and analysts often sit alongside colleagues from other agencies working highly classified matters.

Since 9/11, 16 new offices have been completed, including Houston (dedicated Wednesday), Jacksonville, Louisville, Omaha, and Jackson this year. Five more contracts have been awarded and are in design or construction, and 10 others have been authorized by Congress and are in acquisition. Our field office program is the largest lease-construct program in the history of the federal government. And we’re planning the renovation or construction of other field offices—our goal is to make sure each one is properly sized, configured, and secured to carry out our mission.

Our new Jacksonville Office, which opened this year, is an example of how our new offices are being designed to blend in with the local architecture.

Working with major developers and our partners at the General Services Administration, the FBI is involved at every step of each building project. “These $40-100 million development deals are exceptionally complex and challenging,” Findlay explained. “And there is a huge commitment of time and effort on the part of our field divisions—they are the ones who are on-site everyday, enabling these projects to move forward.”

Findlay also said we make sure that the design of each building reflects the surrounding area and is environmentally friendly, following U.S. Green Building Council criteria.

FBI field offices aren’t our only spaces being transformed to help us carry out our mission, though. For example:

• In 2003, our Laboratory moved out of its cramped space at FBI Headquarters and into an ultramodern facility three times as large.
• We are planning a state-of-the-art, new records facility to centrally manage all FBI records and make them available to our investigators through fast online searches.
• We’re working with the State Department to ensure the effectiveness of our Legal Attaché offices in U.S. embassies overseas, building SCIFs and providing Top Secret connectivity.
• We’re evaluating, relocating, or expanding all of our satellite offices (our 400+ resident agencies) around the country—46 such offices moved just last year.
  

In the end, said Findlay, it’s all about the mission. “The better our facilities, the better we’ll be able to protect our communities.” 

Resources:
- Director Mueller’s remarks at Houston office dedication