Land Port of Entry Planning Process
For any given fiscal year, the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) submits to GSA a list of prioritized projects to be included in GSA’s capital program. Based on this list, GSA regional offices contract with a private sector A/E to develop a feasibility study to define a project’s scope, budgets and schedules to support a design prospectus. During the feasibility study, GSA works with CBP to establish overall building area, inspection lanes, warehouses and other features necessary to accommodate CBP’s programmatic needs. The resulting developed scope is checked against a computer traffic model called the BorderWizard that calculates wait times based on a variety of data inputs. The verified scope is then cost benchmarked to develop a project budget.
Once the project’s scope is determined and its costs have been established, the region submits a project design prospectus to GSA’s national office for review and integration into the annual capital program for submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the spring of any given fiscal year. Because of limited funding, the projects are competed against the other capital projects within the overall GSA submittal. Should the project be approved by OMB, it is included in the President’s Budget the following February for review, authorization and funding by Congress.
Last Reviewed 2/5/2009