Smithfield Website Design

• Town of Smithfield Public Outreach Website Design

• https://smithfieldvacomprehensiveplan.com/

• 2021

The Problem
The Town of Smithfield Virginia was growing and with that growth came the need for a new comprehensive plan. Summit Design and Engineering Services was contracted by the Town to provide planning services for this effort. The planning team met with the Town and residents to develop the new comprehensive plan, but the Town wanted the residents to be able to follow along during the process so everything had a sense of transparency. With the last comprehensive plan in 2013, the Town only had printed media that could be shared with residents and they wanted to have a website created that could provide residents with all of the necessary information about the planning process. They also wanted the residents to be able to provide feedback.

The Solution
This project began with me meeting with the Summit planning team. We discussed what the website needed to include and the basic functionality that Town Manager was looking for. This project had a fairly quick turn-around of only two weeks, so I began creating the website skeleton after the first meeting with the planning team. After the skeleton was complete, it was shared with the planning team and we worked together to add in the information that they crafted about the plan to share with residents. During this process, the feedback form/survey was also added to the website for residents. Once the planning team was satisfied with the website, it was shared with the Town Manager. There were minor edit requests from the Town Manager and then the site was launched for the public.

This website gave residents the ability to review the overall goals of the plan, read over provided documents during the planning process, and also provide feedback on the new comprehensive plan. The website gave more residents access to what was going on in their Town without them having to go somewhere or attend a public meeting, which was very important at the time due to the ongoing pandemic.