(Washington, DC) With the Office of the Director checking out of the Reeves Center today, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) will complete its move into a new building at 55 M Street, SE. The new headquarters is a LEED® Gold certified green building and will house approximately 450 staff members who previously were spread out in multiple locations in the District. As part of the move, DDOT has also taken significant steps to reduce the amount of paper records it will house at the new facility.

New Document Management System

In preparation for the move, DDOT initiated its document management system upgrade with a massive document sorting and identification effort. DDOT currently has approximately 8 million documents, the vast majority of which are paper originals and copies which have been housed in hundreds of filing cabinets, store rooms, and even bridge abutments.

Most of these materials, including plans for long completed bridge and road projects, have now been boxed and will be transferred to a temporary storage facility. Soon, employees will begin the labor intensive process of prioritizing these documents for digitization so DDOT can reduce its paper footprint and also make the information more readily accessible. The Department has also completed a taxonomy review to assist in the naming and organization of documents and files so they can be searched and easily located in an electronic document management system.

“This is the most ambitious project of its kind undertaken in the District Government, and I want to commend the staff who have taken on this daunting task,” said DDOT Acting Director Terry Bellamy, “It will save us space and money for storing documents; save us staff time filing and searching for records, hasten our response to emergencies and disasters, increase our compliance with FOIA and other regulatory and audit requirements and improve our customer service.”

The New DDOT Offices

55 M Street, SE received the “Best Urban Office” award at the recent NAIOP Maryland/DC 9th Annual Awards of Excellence. NAIOP is the Commercial Real Estate Development Association.

DDOT’s administrative offices will occupy the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th floors of the new building. Visitors will be required to sign-in at the main reception desk located on the 4th Floor to gain access to DDOT offices. The entrance to the onsite visitor parking garage is located on Cushing Place south of M Street.

The new office is accessible via the Navy Yard Metro station on the Green Line, and is directly above the station entrance at M and Half Streets.

DDOT’s new mailing address is 55 M Street, SE, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20003. Office fax and telephone numbers will remain the same. The Main Number for the Department is (202) 673-6813 and the website is ddot.dc.gov.

The DDOT offices for the School Transit Subsidiary Program and public space permits will remain at their current locations. The School Transit Subsidy Program will remain in the Reeves Center at 2000 14th Street, NW, and the Permitting Center will remain at 1100 4th Street, SW.