Bringing development and visual design teams together

Hi,

There is an ongoing strategic initiative around bringing the Visual Development team together with developers.
There is a significant challenge around workflow between visual design and development; unlike most shops, the Visual Design team is not directly involved with the development staff. What ends up happening is developers break the model of ownership with respect to html semantic structure and css.

The goal here is to refine the model and improve workflow between these teams through RTC.
Ideally, the VD team would get notified every time a change to css/xhtml files occurs.

Additionally, the VD team works across all Projects/Products: the team would be defined globally as opposed to individually for each Project. I don't think this is possible today,

So far there have been two suggestions:
Have the css/xhtml files on separate components and send email notifications when there are incoming changes on that component against a VD user workspace.
Have developers create approvals for the VD team whenever they change css/xhtml files.

I would greatly appreciate any advice/suggestions!