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Washington County staff report progress on change management, building automation and safety goals
Summary
A county staff member summarized progress on formalizing a change management program, creating communication templates, integrating building automation into an upcoming construction project and maintaining a safety record of 800 days without lost time.
Tara, a county staff member, told the committee on the county’s strategic priorities that staff have rebuilt momentum on a formal change-management program and have created standardized communication templates for service outages and other countywide messages.
“The first goal is listed here with, formalizing the change management program. We're a little off track on that 1 at the beginning of the year, but we've gotten that back,” Tara said. She added staff are adapting the templates for project-management use and will present them to department heads next week.
Tara said work on key performance indicators is continuing and that a fuller update is expected toward the end of the year. She also described work on a campus master plan and related construction: “We're looking to start construction in the fall. So, that's gonna be a little over a year project to start from start to finish.” The county intends to put the 90% construction documents out for bid in June, with bids due July 1 and a pre-bid site walk for contractors planned for June 11.
The building automation plan has been folded into the construction schedule, Tara said, because “while we have everything ripped out, it's the perfect time to start making some of those changes.” She said the county will upgrade building controls and certain hardware to improve energy efficiency and reporting.
On workplace safety, Tara reported the county’s maintenance group had gone “over 800 days without any lost time for a incident within our group.” She said all full-time employees completed a 10-hour OSHA training and that the newly formed safety team—about six weeks into work—will develop recurring annual training for full‑time and seasonal staff.
Chair comments and other supervisors framed the items as routine operational updates; no formal action was taken on these agenda items during the meeting.
What’s next: staff will present templates at the department‑head meeting, finalize KPI work later in the year and move ahead with the campus bid timeline that could lead to construction starting in August and continuing roughly 15–16 months.
