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 their collective impact on courthouse space.
We forecast workload, personnel, and space needs during a courthouse needs assessment. In doing so, I am often asked two questions about courthouse forecasts: How far in the future should a court forecast? How accurate are the forecasts? It should be noted that the quantity and quality of historical data available impact the answers to both these questions. This post assumes that at least 15 to 20 years of historical data are available for forecasting. However, we have worked with courts to perform needs assessments with only 5 to 10 years of data and understand the challenges many courts face in compiling sufficient historical data.
How far into the future should a court forecast?
A needs assessment is typically conducted for a court that needs a major renovation project or a new courthouse. Since planning, funding, designing, and constructing such a project can take 10 to 15 years, 15 years is the minimum time frame for courthouse forecasts. However, I recommend a longer-range forecast. Our typical forecast is 25 to 30 years, but we have been asked to forecast as much as 50 years into the future.
The reason why a court would want to forecast 25 years, or more is twofold. First, getting a major courthouse construction effort underway takes a lot of work and support. When the doors finally open, it would be ideal to have a reasonable amount of capacity for the court to grow for 5 to 10 years without seeking additional space. In reality, once a courthouse undergoes a significant construction project, it is often decades before a court can gain the political attention needed to request additional funds for large space projects.
During this time frame, the court will typically expand by moving some of the components out of the courthouse and making compromises to design standards to squeeze additional personnel and operations into the courthouse. Therefore, planning for reasonable growth when pursuing a large construction effort is much more cost-effective than attempting to acquire additional funding for another project a few years after the doors open.
The second reason for courthouse forecasts of 25 years or more is to plan for the property size needed to accommodate a courthouse when pursuing a new facility or annex. Even though a needs assessment generates a 30-year forecast of requirements, a court should still build to those requirements. A common strategy, especially when constructing the new courthouse, is to size the facility to the 15-20 year time frame but plan the size of the site to accommodate the entire 30-year needs. The design should incorporate how the courthouse can expand on the site while maintaining critical security circulation patterns and court functionality.
This process has a balancing act – major renovation or new construction projects are expensive, and there is often considerable pressure to control costs. Constructing for excess need increases the project's cost and places the project at risk from the claims that tax dollars are not being spent wisely. Every court jurisdiction must assess this risk when seeking funds for a court project.
How accurate are the courthouse forecasts?
Forecasting the workload, personnel, and space is necessary for a needs assessment. However, it is generally true that the further out in time you forecast, the less accurate the result. There is no statistically precise way to predict the many factors that can impact court trends. Here are just a few of the hard-to-predict aspects:
- Workload - future changes to law, policy, and procedures
- Judges - the political process of establishing the need for a new judge and having the new judge appointed/elected
- Court Component Personnel – changes to workload policy and processes, the impact of new technology, changes to workload measurement formulas
- Space – changes to design standards, including new security requirements and additional technologies
Given all of the unknowns, the goal of the forecasting process is to focus less on the accuracy of the forecast for individual years and, instead, to predict a reasonable trend for the future.
How do you determine reasonably? As discussed in our previous post, one way to determine reasonableness is by using rigorous and valid statistical forecasting methods combined with the insights and knowledge of experienced managers on the court planning team. We conduct a facilitated process to work with the court and related component representatives in group and individual planning sessions.
We have found that working with the representatives in a group helps inform everyone about trends and potential impacts on the courthouse. Working with each component individually allows one to explore further detail about specific trends and needs. Once the courthouse forecasts have been generated, a review process is conducted in a group format so everyone can see the planning assumptions and resulting forecasts. Keeping the process open and transparent to the court planning team is essential in forming reasonable projections.
A second way we determine reasonableness is to benchmark the planning results of a court to other jurisdictions. For example, looking at other counties regionally and sometimes nationally that have similar trends is helpful when planning for a county court. Such trends could include population, workload, the number of judges, and the number of court personnel.
Every court in the country is unique, but in the aggregate, some helpful observations can be gleaned from looking across many jurisdictions and comparing courts with similar trends. We call a group of courts with similar trends a “growth model” and use a “cluster analysis” method to determine the courts that belong to a growth model. We have found growth models to be instrumental in helping court planning teams to gain confidence in the courthouse forecasts because the results are comparable to similar court jurisdictions.
So the bottom line answers to the questions raised above are: when performing courthouse planning, forecast workload, personnel, and space at least 25 years into the future. Ensure that the courthouse forecasts are reasonable by having an open process reviewed by representatives from each court component and benchmarking the forecasts with other jurisdictions with similar trends.
A main objective of courthouse planning is to develop credible and reasonable courthouse forecasts that will ultimately lead to the design and construction of a project that will shape the future of your court for many years. Putting thoughtful effort into forecasting and planning can lead to a renovated or new courthouse that genuinely enhances the administration of justice.
