New Courthouse Projects Begin at the Starting Gate

Today, I will talk about how important it is to perform a needs assessment, focusing on how proper planning from a courthouse improvement project's beginning phase can avoid wasted time and extra expenses as the project progresses through its subsequent phases.

A program to plan, design, and construct a new courthouse or a major renovation project for an existing courthouse is a long and complicated effort that can take many years to complete as it works through multiple project phases.

The needs assessment, or court planning and programming effort, is the first phase of that process. It includes evaluating the court's current and future space needs, identifying space projects to address those needs, and determining the best course of action for the court to pursue in meeting its space needs.

New Courthouse and Renovation Steps

The basic component steps of a needs assessment may be summarized as follow:

1. Projecting Demand: This first step begins the needs assessment process by quantifying courthouse demand by examining geographic, demographic, and economic data and predicting court workload and personnel.
2. Setting a Vision: This step continues the demand planning process by establishing a team representing all court components to develop critical planning assumptions by providing first-hand insight through their collective observations and experience.
3. Assessment Metrics: The third step involves assessing a courthouse using performance metrics that rate court functionality, security, space condition, standards, and technology. The goal of the assessment is to identify the capacity of the courthouse and its limitations and opportunities for improvement.
4. Need Versus Capacity: The fourth step seeks to answer the question, “What are the court’s future facility needs?” by comparing the demand addressed in Steps 1 and 2 with the courthouse capacity discussed in Step 3.
5. Selecting Alternatives: The fifth step identifies the most feasible strategies for addressing the courthouse's current and future space and adjacency needs.
6. Execution Strategy: The sixth step continues the process begun in Step 5 by selecting an individual, long-term execution strategy or a combination of incremental short- and long-term solutions.
7. Project Development: This final step establishes a program of requirements (POR), an item-by-item schedule of required courthouse facilities, including the number, size, and adjacency requirements of each item that provides the transition from the court planning and programming phase to the schematic architectural design phase.

A good courthouse planning process resulting in a clearly defined and well-founded POR can catalyze efficiently moving through the subsequent design and construction phases of a project delivery program. A sufficiently detailed POR can serve as a vehicle for preparing an initial estimate of the project’s costs. This exercise can be invaluable in terms of time and cost savings for the court.

The following chart is virtually axiomatic within the planning/design/construction industry. It depicts the rising cost of making changes and the diminishing effectiveness of the changes as a project progresses through court planning and programming, schematic design, design development, construction documents, and construction phases.

The chart documents that the further you go on a project and discover a miss-step, the more time and money you will have wasted getting to the point where you need to “go back to square one.” It also documents the fact that all architects know to be true that a revised plan – notably a plan revised late in the construction documents phase – rarely results in a successful project.

In my experience, the concepts shown in this chart are entirely accurate. Let me give you an example.

Three years ago, I performed a needs assessment for a courthouse in the Mid-Atlantic. The judges and staff considered the existing courthouse substantially undersized and in terrible condition. They were all most anxious to leave this facility and move into a new courthouse. The demand versus capacity analysis verified the court’s feeling toward this facility, and as a result of a diligent analysis of options, a new courthouse strategy was selected. A detailed POR, including a cost estimate, was also prepared for this strategy.

Shortly afterward, just before hiring an architect to begin schematic design, reality in the form of funding limitations set in. When the court presented its new courthouse strategy and the associated capital cost to the jurisdiction’s elected officials, it was rebuked for creating an “unaffordable palace.” Although it was certainly not a palace, it finally met the court’s actual needs after having suffered in a deficient facility for many years. Nevertheless, a change in approach was required.

To accomplish this, I circled back to the beginning of the process described earlier in steps 1 and 2. After several meetings with the judges and the clerk’s office staff, it was determined that courtroom sharing and a collegial chambers layout would complement the court’s current operational practices and, as a by-product, result in a substantial decrease in the square footage required for the new courthouse. A new POR and cost estimate was prepared and submitted to the elected officials, and this time it was approved.

Time lost? Three weeks to circle back and develop a new POR and cost estimate. Additional cost to the court? $0.00 – I was working on a fixed-fee contract. Had the project progressed into the design or construction documents phase before discovering the funding limitations, the time lost could have been ten-fold and the cost to the court substantial. Since the POR changes were made before commencing schematic design, it also avoided the architect’s pitfall that I previously noted that a revised plan rarely results in a successful project.

I am pleased to report that I toured the new courthouse last year, where a happy chief judge and court clerk met me.