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"Building Blocks - County to catalog facilities, determines most efficient uses of space"

By Karen Brooks, January 22, 2001

Reprint Courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH - After 106 years in business, Tarrant County has amassed a collection of buildings worth more than $200 million.

There's a mysterious maze of renovated office space, stacked parking garages, filled warehouses, antiquated designs and altered floor plans totaling almost 3 million square feet.

The uses are as varied as the jobs the county performs: a 50-year-old youth center, a 38-year-old maximum-security jail and a 30-year-old warehouse for storing voting machines.

County building engineers, hoping to get a better idea of how space is used and how much is needed, are about to launch a massive cataloging effort. They will calculate how many people work in each facility per square foot, what kind of office space the buildings contain, how well the space is used and how much room is needed for planned expansions.

The project will include everything, from the 106-year-old historic courthouse downtown to the Mansfield annex that opened last year to the 90-year-old Allied building on Eighth Street to a 2-year-old laundromat near the Mansfield boot camp.

In about a year, they should know which buildings could be redesigned for efficiency and where employees can be temporarily housed during renovations, said Gary Kirby, the count's facilities manager.

"Our buildings are quite an expensive resource, so we need to take care of them - and it's too big and too complex not to have a system by which you're evaluating and making necessary repairs and projecting future needs," Commissioner Dionne Bagsby said.

Each facility's building engineer will measure every cubicle, window, office, desk, file cabinet, parking space, bathroom and break room. They'll take turns using the county's only laser measuring device. A computer program the county plans to buy will create an inventory that will, ideally, be update regularly, Kirby said. The county's Purchasing Department is expected to call for bids on that program within the next few months.

The cost of the "Facilities Management Space Plan" hasn't been determined. Tarrant is among a growing number of companies and governmental agencies nationwide trying to maximize facilities.

Companies are spending millions to get the most use from their office space, doing everything from hiring file-organizing consultants to redesigning offices to accommodate team projects - reducing space per person but amplifying the productivity of employees, consultants said.

The North Carolina consultant who helped Denton city officials get a handle on its paperwork estimates that 80 percent of all paper in offices is never used. Throwing it away could save up to a third of filing space, the consultant said.

Government agencies are especially guilty of wasting storage space because the demand for records is so great, said Barbara Hemphill, author of Taming the Paper Tiger and head of consulting firm Hemphill Productivity Institute in Raleigh, N.C.

District Clerk Tom Wilder is eagerly awaiting the construction of the $70.6 million justice center, set to be completed in 2004. The trickle-down effect of that new center means Wilder will eventually have more space for, among other things, a larger evidence room.

Wilder's office keeps evidence from roughly 13000 criminal cases a year after the cases have been closed.

"We have to keep this evidence just about forever," Wilder said. "So in my six years here, we have expanded the evidence room once, and by the time we move into the new building in two or three years, it will very definitely be time to expand it again." The growth of suburbs, decentralized government and technology mean less need for centralized open public areas.

The 20-year-old Weatherford Street administration building downtown was one the only place residents from across the county could go to get information about property taxes or to renew their auto registrations, get marriage licenses and pay traffic fines.

Now the county has eight sub-courthouses where residents can go for information, and motorists can renew auto registrations at the grocery store.

These days the cavernous lobby on Weatherford Street rarely has more than a handful of people waiting in line.

"We wouldn't leave that open if the county built that facility today, Kirby said. Several areas of the county are expanding: The probate court has more volunteers than room to work, and an expansion of the law library is already planned in the courthouse. Information technology services will add more people as the computer system is updated, and the Public Health Department and justice of the peace offices have outgrown their facilities, Kirby said.

The space plan project will also identify which of the most inefficient buildings can be renovated and which should be torn down. The Belknap jail, which houses maximum-security prisoners, will be part of this discussion. From a labor standpoint - employees per facility - it appears to be the most inefficient, officials said. Maximum-security prisoners including those with severe mental illness and violent or suicidal tendencies, need the highest amount of supervision. The maximum-security floor at the newer Tarrant County Corrections Center, built in 1991, allows for a ratio of 1 to 48. It is difficult for a single guard at the Belknap facility to supervise 48 inmates at once because the 38-year-old jail has columns, solid doors and catwalks.

Instead the jail has about one guard for every 12 to 15 inmates, said Deputy Chief Savala Swanson, who oversees jail operations for the Sheriff's Department. "It's a linear jail design and under that time period, that was a very modern design," Swanson said. "the quest is how can you design that building, if at all, to suit those maximum-security purposes and be staff efficient?"

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