Planning

Space Planning

Good planning of space requires that Institutions:

  • Model their space
  • Audit their space regularly to ensure that the central database is correct
  • Facilitiate changes of space use to meet the University's business needs.

The Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE) built on earlier work by the SMG and put together a model of the sustainable Estate where calculations can be made of the size of Estate required given information concerning student numbers by subject. (see here)

This model also suggests norms for certain spaces so that more than just the teaching Estate can be determined. The norms are based on the EMS benchmarking data.

This is used by some universities, whilst others prefer to use their own model. The key is to use some mechanism to determine whether appropriate space is given to both academic departments and services.

Teaching Space Planning

Good planning of teaching space requires that Institutions

  • Conduct a Teaching Needs Analysis to identify how well the current room-stock meets the needs of the current timetable
  • Review class enrolment data to check class sizes
  • Model Space Changes using the "what-if" facilities in the timetabling software.

Teaching Needs Analysis

A teaching needs analysis seeks to determine how well the class sizes required matches the room size availability. Class size required is the number of hours in a week for a given class size and can be determined by the timetabling system. The room size availability takes the capacity of a given room and multiplies it by the number of teaching hours in the week (see here).

Class Enrolments

If your occupancy levels look low and you suspect a mismatch of your Estate to the class sizes you are teaching it is worth extracting student numbers by module from the student record system to see if there is need to factor this into your Estate planning. An example of this analysis benchmarked against a second institution can be found here.

Model Space Changes

Current timetabling software is very powerful and the full functionality is rarely used. More use can be made of it as a simulator. This work can be done in-house, or commissioned from the software vendor or an external consultant. HE estates are undergoing considerable change with some Institutions consolidating onto one campus, some merging and some adding new buildings. Others have chosen to extend the working day from 5pm to 6pm or even 7pm to avoid the capital investment of new build. The opportunity to explore the impact of these changes on the existing teaching room stock is offered by the software. Similarly questions concerning how much further student growth can be accommodated can also be tested and answered.