In 2000, the Departments of Agriculture (MDA), Health (MDH), and Human Services (DHS) received funding to develop a pre-design study and investigate the feasibility of restructuring the workplace of their agencies and divisions and of collocating the Departments of Health and Human Services program offices, and the Departments of Health and Agriculture laboratories. The broad goal of the Minnesota State Administration was to minimize long-term costs of government facilities, and to increase access, and most importantly, to consider ways in which agencies can best serve their customers. The concerned departments viewed the project as an opportunity to look carefully at the relationships between their programs to provide better customer service. Currently, those departments allocate their program facilities and staff between the twin cities: St. Paul and Minneapolis. Current facilities are inadequate to meet the needs of the agencies, and in fact threaten their ability to accomplish their mission and to maintain skilled and experienced staff.

Through a collaborative team approach a rigorous process was established and included two major procedures that have been conceptualized toward achieving solutions and establishing imperatives and guidelines. The first procedure was to analyze the existing condition leading to problems definition; while envisaging challenges and opportunities. The second procedure was to develop and establish mechanisms for understanding agency needs while developing consensus in the decision making process.

The methodology that was adopted throughout the process was participatory, intensive, and comprehensive in nature and employed several techniques. It was developed based on the belief that the first step for developing an employee responsive work environment is to determine the best technique or combination of techniques for collecting and gathering information from Minnesota State employees. A number of methods and techniques were conceived, including visioning sessions, workshops, working meetings, survey questionnaires, interviews, and web-based surveys. A user centered participatory process for programming the workplace resulted in defining area requirements of each individual division together with the square footage, visual character of different types of workstations. Comprehensive agency requirements including circulation and shared spaces were developed as a result of this process. To improve the delivery of services to customers, inter and intra-departmental agencies one-way and reciprocal connections were investigated and diagrammed. Customer contact between a state agency or other agency groups or individuals was also analyzed.

A public input process for site selection was devised and resulted in defining three sites preferred by agency employees that were analytically compared against a set of environmental goals. The comparison provided a knowledge base for final site selection. Establishing a funding mechanism for implementing the projects was envisioned through a public/private partnership alternative. Concomitantly, this has replaced the state's traditional funding approach. The research process and findings of all project components have been classified and categorized in a final pre-design document. It serves both the Minnesota Department of Administration, and the concerned agencies to speak with knowledge about the project and to have the project scope and parameters identified so that agencies would move forward with subsequent design and construction. Recently, the project funding was approved and the state designer selection board has requested design proposals then selected the design teams for providing design services for the offices, lab facilities, and parking facilities of the Departments of Agriculture and Health, and for the offices of the Department of Human Services.

For detailed description of the project go to the following links:
resources

Minnesota State Strategic Plan Link to Division of State Building Construction