City Hall staff on the move

“These changes are partly about accommodating staff but it's also doing things better,”

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An effort to encourage more ridership of Mississauga Transit has had a logistical domino effect through City Hall offices that will ultimately streamline its building permit systems.
Ken Owen, director of facilities and property management, said a redistribution of city office space was needed in order to make room at its Mississauga Transit depot for more buses.
“There were two prime drivers for the moves,” said Owen. “The first and most important one is that the City of Mississauga is pursuing an initiative to grow ridership in Mississauga Transit and in order to do that there needs to be more buses.”
Bus storage facilities at 975 Central Parkway, therefore, had to be expanded. “We needed to free-up space to make an expansion of the storage and maintenance facilities,” he said.
But that meant a number of people working in offices there had to be moved. “There is a lot of chain-reaction here,” he said. “There are about 10 or 12 different stages in this process.”
The second driver for the shake-up is that although the city has grown substantially over the years, not much extra space has been made for the increasing numbers of staff, he said. “We really hadn't provided any space for the growth in the workforce since 1990, when we last acquired additional space,” he said.
This provided the opportunity to rethink the locations of some of the offices in City Hall, said Owen. “These changes are partly about accommodating staff but it's also doing things better,” he said. “What happened was that as City Hall grew offices were moved to various locations in the building without a great flow to it. We had centres on different floors that are all part of the same process, for building permits. So we wanted to consolidate those different points of contact in one convenient location.”
From the 8th to the 11th floors in City Hall are a number of counters where people looking to complete the building permit process have to go to, Owen said. “So now they will all be co-located at the same place so people will only have to come to the second floor to do everything,” he said. “It's a customer service enhancement but it was all a result of the other moves.”
As a result of all of that, the City has had to look outside City Hall for a bit more space to move some sections of some departments. The City has now expanded the amount of space it leases at 201 City Centre Dr., owned by Morguard.
“We needed more space so we've moved some people to 201,” said Owen. “So we took people from the transit depot and took some people from City Hall and moved people around.”
The City is leasing 2 ½ floors of the building over a five year period. “We've signed for five years with the option of renewing for another five,” Owen said. “We've bought ourselves some time to examine our longer term needs and how best to manage those. We'll be undertaking a study to see what options are there. All the options are on the table. We could continue to lease or purchase a property...”
A total of 220 moved to 201 City Centre Dr. over a period of moves in May and June. Those represented in the new building include the main administration end of Community Services and Transportation and Works.
“The moves all went very well,” said Owen. “We had a lot of assistance from the design firm Comely Van Brussel, they did a lot of the design work. Urbacon was the contractor for the renovations and POI Interiors did our move management.”
In order for the city to be able to use the space the building had to be compatible with the fibre optic needs of the city's computer and phone system. “The city has a fibre optic network throughout its community,” said Owen. “So our connection now to 201 City Centre Dr. is seamless. It's as though they are sitting right next to me.”
The staff redistribution has been a result of 18 months of planning, he said. “We are actually probably about half way through the overall schedule of who goes where,” he said. “Some of our enforcement people are going to be going into some space on Mavis Road in the next several months.”
The new building permit counters are expected to be up and running on the second floor by the New Year.

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