Agenda - 01-23-2014 - 7a - Laserfiche WebLink

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s r Experience Collaborative Planning From the Latin root collaborare meaning 'to labor together', collaborative planning is truly a partnership in visioning, design, and design implementation. The outcome of the collaborative process derives its power from participatory engagement and sustaining collective trust. In an age of declining faith and participation in civic institutions, the Library remains one of the few public entities embraced by all as serving the collective well being of a community. Ironically, shrinking confidence in many governmental institutions has helped foster more entrepreneurial behavior. As libraries continue to evolve from mere warehouses of information to places for knowledge creation, they are becoming an important new forum for problem solving and entrepreneurship. Partnering is fun, but it is also hard work. Each party — Design Team, Library, County Management, or other stakeholders — must fulfill its obligations and contribute meaningfully to the process. As architects, we can guide the process, facilitate engagements, and articulate design options for consideration. The owner must set the vision and make challenging decisions along the way. Setting the Vision Projects of this type are about positive change. At the outset, we conduct focused workshops with the project leaders to understand your vision. In addition to gathering empirical data, we will work with the leadership group to understand the desired customer experience, educational outcomes, community engagement, change management and financial objectives. Before reaching out to a broader audience, it is critical to build strategic consensus among this group. Stakeholder Engagement Gaining stakeholder consensus during the public outreach and programming phase is essential to the planning process. Direct engagement enables participants to fuse their discrete individual experiences with broad and comprehensive solutions. This leads to participant buy -in, alignment of values, and a strong commitment to next steps, At Freelon, we have formulated a methodology during the initial phases of planning that provides an open forum for the voices of stakeholders. The initial stakeholder meeting should include everyone, from librarians and devoted customers to educators and scholars, from security personnel to facility maintenance staff. This is a meeting where all ideas are placed on the table and discussed in an open forum for everyone to hear. This meeting ideally results in a list of priorities for the project — institutional, experiential, educational, financial, etc. The stakeholder engagement process is also a great way to extend the library's ongoing civic conversation with the broader Orange County community. A feedback loop that acknowledges comments received and reports on design progress is critical. These are typically accomplished through information sessions. The frequency of these updates will be determined by the size and composition of the stakeholders. It is important that the engagement process not become event centric, but rather it should have clear objectives and deliverables to help advance the project, Relevant Project Experience The projects depicted on the following pages each began with varying degrees of stakeholder engagement. In some cases it served to confirm prior programming efforts. In others, it was the start of an expansive process to define the institution and then develop the quantitative and qualitative spaces within. In all cases, we customized the approach to the client and community they served. FREELON I Southern Branch Library Facilitator Proposal 42