Update on New IPS Offices in Knoxville

In August we talked briefly about the possibility of the Knoxville area offices of IPS moving into a building on University Avenue.  The State Building Commission has approved the plan, the UT Board of Trustees has approved IPS as a tenant in one of the buildings, and I anticipate that we will be able to make the move after the first of the year.  This move may raise uncertainty and anticipation with many of the IPS staff, so in this note I will take just a moment to talk about where we are in this project.

Our present offices, both in the conference center and UTK campus, total about 17,000 net square feet, and the new building has about 29,000 square feet, provided on two separate floors. We will have training space and videoconferencing facilities that we don’t have now. This will probably leave about 5,000 square feet of space still available, and we are working with the university to determine who else might locate there.

 

We will be a tenant in the building, and the Knoxville campus will continue to provide maintenance and other services for the building, just as it does for our current buildings. We will continue to pay for parking, as we do now. UTK will patrol and maintain the parking lot. We will arrange for visitor parking.

While we are still months from the move, I believe that we all share concerns that the timeframe may not be enough time to plan for our offices and to make the transition.  I have asked Steve Thompson to serve as the project manager to help us get into the building, and I’ve asked several members of the Central Office and MTAS staff to serve as team leaders on this move.  At this time I envision five different teams, and have asked the following to serve as team leads on these efforts:

Team                                                              Lead

Planning                                                          Rick Whitehead         

Logistics                                                          Judie Martin

Business Office                                               Gail White

IT                                                                    Scott Gordy

Library                                                            Frances Adams O’Brien

I have also asked several members of the Central Office area staff and MTAS to serve on these teams. These teams will start meeting and moving forward over the next few weeks.  For those Knoxville-area employees directly impacted by this move, I ask that you start reviewing your files and materials that you expect to move.  We have all accumulated a lot of stuff over the past couple of decades, and certainly do not want to move anything that we do not need to take into new offices.  Please start purging your files now, and let’s prepare for our move.

 

We will be scheduling tours of the facility this fall for anyone in IPS interested in seeing the building and space.  I hope that you will be interested and take the tours to see the new building.  I believe that you will find that this is both a nice improvement for IPS, and that this will help us as we continue to deliver our mission of public service outreach in Tennessee.  Please let me know if you do have questions, thoughts, or concerns, and I look forward to a successful project and move.