LIMA — Buildings and properties owned by Allen County will be under the microscope until Friday as a facility assessment by Cleveland-based K2M Design began Wednesday.
Funded through both county and state funds, the study, priced at just more than $100,000, aims to determine how departments and facilities match up to maximize efficiency and productivity.
“We’re very excited for the future of Allen County and what we’re looking at with our buildings,” commissioner Cory Noonan previously told The Lima News.
This assessment, expected to be completed Friday, will incorporate both current conditions as well as future needs.
“In the big picture, we are doing an analysis of the facilities, the bricks and sticks, the mortar, that sort of thing,” K2M founder Scott Maloney said. “We’ll look at the building site, the envelope, the roof, the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, the structure and interior finishes.”
Maloney also wants to examine what county departments may be lacking in their facilities and how that could be addressed.
“We’re taking a separate, but parallel path, looking at the needs,” he said. “We’re looking at the needs for the departments and users within the spaces we’re contracted to perform, and there’s about 19 spaces we’re analyzing. We’re making sure they’re functionally efficient for them, finding the pros and cons of the space, looking at it from the perspective of the number of staff inside, the parking, visitor access, all the things that happen with the operation of the space.”
Once that needs assessment is completed, K2M will begin to offer various solutions for these needs, with the emphasis being on making them attainable and practical.
“We don’t want to create big ‘pie in the sky’ designs,” he said. “Those aren’t appropriate solutions. The goal is to make implementable plans that are appropriate and have flexibility and efficiency to enable county government to grow and contract as new laws are enacted and different statutes come into place.”
Evaluating the data from the assessment is expected to take four months.
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