Facility Needs Assessment

In 2021, the City engaged a consultant to conduct a Facility Needs Assessment (FNA) to comprehensively understand and plan for addressing many shortcomings of City facilities. The project explored how municipal building spaces can more efficiently provide services to the public, enhance collaboration across City departments, improve the safety of City staff and the public, and connect the community to the City organization that serves them.

A Long Overdue Assessment

The City has not evaluated organization-wide facility needs in more than 50 years. As with any City infrastructure system, it is important to have a plan for how the building system will meet the demands of the community into the future. But a plan is only the first step in the process. A typical timeline for major facility investments starts with assessing the need and determining the best path forward at a conceptual level — that is what we have accomplished through the Facilities Needs Assessment.

The focus of the 2021 project was on improving staff functionality, concentrating on the employee areas within each facility. The project included a review of 17 sites in the City organization’s portfolio, which house staff from all 10 departments. The City chose to perform a portfolio-wide assessment in order to avoid a siloed approach to solutions and to better explore opportunities for synergies among departments, for operations, resources, and common spaces, in the delivery of services to the community.

The result was a comprehensive report delivered to the City Council on the current state of City facilities, and updated projections about future needs.

This report will be used to inform future decisions about how to direct resources to maintain and update public buildings so they can continue to operate efficiently and effectively into the future.

Next Steps

Future steps for the building infrastructure system will involve selecting a recommended project to move forward on and then conducting feasibility studies like flood plain analysis or mitigation. Facility projects need to be prioritized and evaluated against other City capital needs. Funding options must be explored so that funding strategies can be developed. Finally, a schedule or timeframe for project design and construction is developed. The entire process, from concept to construction, can span multiple years.

(Go back: Investing in Corvallis Facility Needs)

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