by Leila Kamal
Over the past decade, big data has changed our world. Its exponential growth, dynamic and ever-changing influence continues to evolve. For university campuses relying on data for facility master planning, dynamic and flexible continues to prove its value over static and stale. A planning document on a shelf, a place-in-time snapshot, does not meet the needs of today’s decision-makers at academic institutions.
Although a master planning effort can be a time-consuming engagement, new and updated facility data, assessment and operational inputs can now be easily layered into the campus planning process to produce valuable insights and develop flexible plans for an unknown future. For research master planning, where the goal to conduct more scientific research is met with the reality of costly space and equipment, it is especially prudent to analyze space utilization, understand how shared space could change how research is conducted, and address conflicting or “murky” data. A living master plan can help. An alternative to the typical static deliverable, a living master plan pulls the information into interactive dashboards that are compiled and easily updated with institutional data to ensure that individual facilities or master plans are evaluated from the perspective of the current state and across a broad range of different factors.
For example, the University of Michigan Strategic Planning and Programming Study for the College of Engineering and School of Information utilized the living master plan process in 2017 to allocate space efficiently, suggest renovations or phasing-out of existing buildings, and develop a roadmap for constructing new facilities. Creating an interactive dashboard utilizing institutional data allowed the team to get a better holistic, real-time understanding of occupancy challenges, conditions and infrastructure in need of attention, and useful life and highest and best use of building stock. The facility plan provides scenarios to accommodate the needs of the College of Engineering now and into the future, with pros and cons identified for each scenario.
A living master plan can also help universities answer specific questions. For an elite research university, HDR was asked to help determine which researchers and PI would be the best candidates for transitioning to new campus spaces as part of a master planning process for newly acquired space. By accessing grant and publication data, in conjunction with internal PI and research data and space utilization, HDR analyzed collaboration within and between departments. As a result, the process afforded the university a better understanding of who was collaborating, their success (in terms of publications and funding), and distances to help determine where individuals and research groups should be collocated in the future to foster further collaboration.
Additionally, a full utilization study to understand the university’s classroom and lab spaces, which departments are booking these spaces, the scheduling and types of spaces most in demand, helped inform future space needs and operational or scheduling adjustments.
These collaboration and utilization studies were simultaneously brought into 3-D blocking and stacking models, providing a clean visualization that can test various scenarios and also incorporate cost and further spatial analysis in interactive planning meetings.
Regardless of the information and inputs being analyzed, the flexibility provided by a living master plan is crucial for universities looking to plan for an unknown future.
Leila Kamal
Leila Kamal is education director at HDR.
