Facilities Master Plan

Project purpose
Many competing demands for scarce resources are made all the more difficult with the ongoing challenging economic environment. To continue providing necessary services, the county has determined that a broader, systemic, and forward-looking strategy is necessary to most efficiently utilize existing facility-related resources and identify future requirements.

A direct outcome of this is establishing a reasoned priority of needs for capital and operating budget planning purposes. Equally important, this approach establishes a framework that will provide a consistent, living process to evaluating ongoing requests for facilities, leases, and related future expenditures.

Included agencies
This project involved the following departments and agencies:
  • Harford County Government
    • All departments except water and sewer
    • Sheriff's Office
    • State's Attorney's Office
    • Circuit Court
    • Elections
    • Harford County Public Schools
    • Harford County Public Library
    • Harford Community College
    • Harford County Health Department
    • Harford County volunteer fire companies
Jacobs Project scope
Against this backdrop, Jacobs Engineering Inc. (“Jacobs”) in association with DeJong Richter and Grimm+Parker Architects (collectively known as the “Jacobs Team” or “Project Team”) was engaged to prepare a long-range County Wide Facilities Plan (also referred to as “Master Plan” or “Facilities Master Plan”) for the previously identified departments and functions. Importantly, this Master Plan has a high-level focus and forms an overall basis for future detailed planning of specific projects.
In summary, focus areas include:
  • Develop a high-level Facilities Master Plan that identifies current and future requirements for the next 10 years
  • Become familiar with county facilities and identify opportunities to optimize the use of existing and available properties, share resources through joint use to affect common objectives, and streamline redundant functions
  • Conduct a physical and functional evaluation of existing county facilities to assess deferred maintenance needs and suitability for current and future use.
  • Develop recommendations that respond to county requirements
  • Create a framework and living process that allows for maintaining the currency of the information and action plan as assumptions and requirements change over time
Report and information organization
This facility master plan is organized as follows:
  • Summary Report that generally presents the process by which the work was accomplished, major results, and appendices that are directly relevant to the report
  • MAPPS™ database that includes facility condition information, operational assessments of facilities evaluated, drawings where available, and other information
  • Additional supporting information that includes other items such as State of the Facilities report, pilot study reports, presentations with preliminary findings, decision briefings, and the like
  • Prioritization Tool, which is an EXCEL based decision model that works in conjunction with the MAPPS™ database
Given the volume of the material and information gathered, the bulk of the detailed information is stored in electronic format for easy retrieval.

Supporting Documents