Keith Fentress
Keith Fentress is the founder and president of Fentress Incorporated, bringing a wealth of expertise in assessment, planning, and space programming projects. His professional strengths encompass change management, program evaluation, and business process improvement, reflecting his commitment to delivering innovative and effective solutions. Outside of his professional endeavors, he is passionate about adventure travel and enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking with his dogs, canoeing, and snorkeling.
After years of
courthouse planning, it is still painful to go into a courthouse where the operations, security, and image of the court are suffering due to the need for more space. In my experience, ten common symptoms indicate that a courthouse has inadequate space for all the court components.
Courtroom sharing is a controversial issue considered by courts all over the country. Most of the courts I work with have one courtroom per judge. However, in an effort to save space and associated costs, the possibility of courtroom sharing frequently arises during
courtroom planning.
For many years, I assessed courthouses, and additional file storage has been a common need for court and related components. The introduction of electronic filing and imaging has now reduced storage in many courts, and I find more courts with reduced filing needs and even vacant file rooms. This...
When conducting a courthouse planning needs assessment, it is important to evaluate the current capacity and condition of the existing courthouse and forecast future demand. As mentioned in our last post, the demand includes the workload and staffing needs of the court and related components and...
Courthouse planning has comprised a large part of my professional experience. During most planning sessions, population projections come up to predict court workload. I have seen numerous studies that examined the number of people in a court jurisdiction per case and the number of people per judge....