postgraduate and research students as well as some ... the university's estate in Edinburgh to 2025 and .... A fully-onl
Estate Strategy 2015-25 Enabling our ambition
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CONTENTS
Contents Chapter 1 Executive Summary 7 Chapter 2 Introduction 11 Chapter 3 Building for the Future
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Theme 1: Growing our academic reputation Theme 2: Enhancing the Student experience Theme 3: Facilitating our international agenda Theme 4: Encouraging enterprise and engagement
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Chapter 4 Finance and Funding
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Chapter 5 Implementation 31 Appendices 37
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Chapter 1 Executive Summary
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Executive Summary
Strategy 2020 has established a compelling vision for the future of the University. This document considers how our physical estate can best support and enable our ambitious plans. Whilst the majority of our future growth will be overseas, the number of students and staff based in Edinburgh is expected to increase by approximately 20% over the next ten years. That increase will include a greater number of postgraduate and research students as well as some increase in on-campus international students. At the same time, information technology will become ever-more pervasive. Our learning environments will require transformation both to facilitate and drive our commitment to “active learning”. Our engagement with local communities will also require an open and inclusive estate. Most of the growth in volume will be accommodated by using our facilities more efficiently, which will release existing capacity. New ways of working will help us to realise that objective. In particular, we aim to reduce the proportion of our estate given over to offices while maintaining an excellent work environment for staff. Nevertheless, there will be an overall expansion of the estate to provide new kinds of space in support of our academic strategy, unlock the potential of some of our buildings, and establish a range of facilities that we lack at the moment.
Our strategy to 2025 will create inspiring environments that are fluid, adaptable and rich in technology. In particular we shall: • radically improve spaces for teaching/learning and student/staff interaction • enhance postgraduate and research facilities • invest in innovative social-learning spaces • expand our residential and sporting provision • create environments that stimulate enterprise and facilitate public engagement • modernise our offices and reduce the proportion of space devoted to them We shall develop a vibrant campus life at each site, extend access, improve usage, and enrich our local communities. In terms of our physical locations, we plan to: • expand Craiglockhart to include conference and exhibition/archive facilities • invest in new facilities for Engineering and the Built Environment • develop Merchiston as a hub for computing and the creative industries This document is a strategy and not a plan. It seeks to establish a coherent framework for future development that is based upon principles aligned to our strategy and values.
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Chapter 2 Introduction
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Introduction In the context of Strategy 2020, this document provides a framework for the development of the university’s estate in Edinburgh to 2025 and beyond, supporting the growth of an enterprising and innovative community that offers an unrivalled student learning experience. It builds upon extensive consultation both within and beyond the university. The strategy for our estate is centred on the development of high quality facilities to support our academic objectives and enhance the student and staff experience by creating inspiring, adaptable, fluid and technology-rich environments. It is intended both to inform the evolution of our physical assets over the next ten years and to establish a sustainable platform for growth beyond 2025. Consequently, our strategy is driven by our goals, reflective of our values and guided by our principles.
Goals, Values and Principles Our Goal: A university of inspiring and innovative spaces that facilitate creativity and enterprise, are ambitious in their design and reach, build a sense of community, and enable staff and students to reach their full potential. Our Values: Professional: We will create inspirational environments including social-learning spaces that can be used concurrently for a range of activities
Ambitious: We will create spaces that reflect our ambitions and better support our growing postgraduate and research portfolio Innovative: We will establish fluid and efficient environments that embrace technology to facilitate and drive new ways of working and to support all modes of study Inclusive: Shared spaces will be designed to be as accessible as possible, promote a sense of community amongst students and staff and facilitate partnership and community engagement. Our Principles: Academically-led: Our buildings will support and drive active learning, encourage social interaction and be widely accessible Integrated: Research facilities will be co-located with learning and teaching where practical Connected: Our main campuses will be rooted in communities within the City of Edinburgh and reflect our institutional culture Enterprising: We will create an estate that reflects and promotes an enterprising culture and supports engagement with partners who share our ambition Welcoming: We will create spaces that users value, improve our sports facilities, and offer high-quality residential accommodation Responsible: Our estate will reflect our corporate social responsibility aspirations and we shall maintain our position as one of the ‘greenest’ universities in the UK
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Chapter 3 Building for the Future
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Building for the Future Our vision is to create inspiring and innovative spaces that facilitate creativity and enterprise, are ambitious in design and reach, build a sense of community, and enable students and staff to achieve their full potential. The architecture of our buildings and the design of our spaces will reflect these ambitions to establish a physical environment that is attractive, transformative and sustainable. The number of staff and students based in Edinburgh is expected to increase by 20% over the period to 2025. Most of that growth can be accommodated through efficiency and refurbishment. However, the estate will expand where this is necessary to establish facilities and spaces that we presently lack. The following section explores the implications for our estate of key academic priorities.
Theme 1: Growing our academic reputation Research The University’s Academic Strategy sets out plans to increase the quality and volume of research and to establish an academic environment that integrates research and teaching activities. Our aim is to increase the number of staff holding research grants from 10% to 40%, grow our research staff base and increase our postgraduate activity, both taught and research-based . Our estate will need to develop and adapt in response to these changes.
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We are committed as a matter of principle to ensuring that research facilities will be co-located with our learning and teaching environments wherever this is practical. Some of these spaces will therefore be School-based. However, in line with our parallel commitment to pursue thematic research across disciplinary boundaries, we may also cluster some of these facilities in ways that best support our emerging research themes: innovative sustainable communities; wellbeing; and the information society. Postgraduate study The academic strategy outlines a significant increase in postgraduate students, from around 1220 to around 2400. This growth will require more and better space for postgraduate students, but should not require a proportionate increase in our overall footprint. Many of the spaces we already have can readily be adapted to our changing needs. There are at present few dedicated postgraduate facilities across the estate. Historically, our primary focus has been supporting undergraduates. We will review the projected shape and scale of provision in this area and establish a range of facilities and environments that are more attractive to postgraduate students. We will ensure that all of our spaces are intensively networked, with ubiquitous connectivity and high-bandwidth, and that our teaching facilities are flexible, rich in technology and of the highest affordable standard. We will also ensure that our library spaces and facilities are adequate for the planned growth in postgraduate activity, including the projected increase in postgraduate researchers.
Engineering and computing Both subjects are key academic disciplines for the University which directly affect our reputation and we need shortly to re-invest in them. Engineering is in particular need of capital investment, and this is likely to require both a reasonable quantum of space (currently c5,000m2) and a relatively high level of expenditure per square metre in order to provide leading edge facilities for students and staff. The quality of our existing provision is substandard and physical constraints make it very difficult to integrate teaching and research.
Modern computer science environments generally consist of bright, flexible spaces that can easily be re-configured around projects, reflective of the environments that graduates are likely to encounter in the industry. They include interactive teaching facilities, high-tech seminar rooms, specialist laboratories and attractive social spaces. Team-based environments are favoured, and all of these elements are clustered in ways that promote a strong sense of community, enriching the academic life of the discipline by promoting innovation and creativity. These design principles will inform our own schemes too.
Independent assessments have confirmed that re-investing in Engineering facilities at Merchiston is unlikely to be either the best or the most cost effective solution. Consequently, our strategy is to move the School of Engineering to another site, which will additionally facilitate the redevelopment of the Merchiston campus as a hub for computing and the creative industries. We will invest in the School of Computing to further improve our specialist labs and learning spaces, providing state-of-the-art facilities for staff and students in an area with a rapidly growing reputation. This investment will be at Merchiston, ensuring that students in the subject continue to enjoy easy access to the Jack Kilby Computing Centre.
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Theme 2: Enhancing the student experience Active learning We will promote and support active learning by creating spaces that foster flexible and collaborative student-centred education. Such spaces will be more fluid than traditional classrooms, and should be easily adapted to many styles of learning, as well as different modes of teaching. This will include remote interaction. They will be bright, colourful, open spaces that are rich in technology and inviting to staff and students alike.
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Lecture theatres will have a role to play in the future, but this role will be reduced. Our teaching and learning environments will be designed both to support and reinforce our academic ambitions and future expectations. Consequently they will promote interaction, embrace technology and readily adapt to changing needs. We shall provide additional facilities where necessary, but many of these environments will be created by redesigning existing classrooms, allowing us to improve the utilisation of our learning and teaching spaces as we grow our student numbers. Pilot schemes are already in train to help us assess what works best.
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6. Social spaces and sport We must meet and exceed the changing expectations of our students to deliver the 2020 aim of increasing student satisfaction to 90% (as measured by NSS). We shall develop a range of high quality physical and virtual environments including: • Flexible spaces for social-learning and staff/ student/community engagement • Informal “hang out” spaces that encourage students to linger • Attractive catering outlets to help stimulate our “campus life” • High-quality connectivity throughout the estate to facilitate communication • Improved sporting facilities on and off campus to promote well-being • High quality accommodation close to the city centre All new development and redevelopment proposals throughout the planning period should be assessed against robust criteria that promote an excellent personalised student experience.
Accommodation and travel The future increase in student numbers makes it likely that there will be a need for additional residential places within the next few years. At present there is high demand for our existing stock, which has an occupancy rate of 97%. Current forecasts (which reflect our plans) suggest the need for an increase to around 1550 spaces by 2020, mainly to meet an assumed growth in demand from overseas students. Reaching this target will require us to secure around 250 additional bed-spaces. Further capacity can be considered if overseas demand is strong. All of our residences will continue to be located in areas where our students want to live, and have good public transport links to each of our main campuses. In addition, we will continue to minimise the need for students to travel between campuses on any given day, both to enhance student satisfaction and reinforce our commitment to environmental sustainability.
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Theme 3: Facilitating our international agenda At present, our principal mode of delivery overseas (Transnational Education, TNE) involves significant periods of face-to-face contact with students and partners abroad. This model has a number of strengths. It also has some weaknesses, including the high cost of delivery. Our TNE model already embraces some on-line provision. A fully-online channel is also available. Future estates developments in Edinburgh will ensure that more and better facilities are provided to enable staff and students here to interact directly with staff and students overseas, not just asynchronously, but in real-time too. This will also benefit students based in Edinburgh, and elsewhere in the UK, for whom it may sometimes be difficult to attend events. Additionally, it will support the development of executive education and continuing professional development programmes. While much of this relies upon the virtual infrastructure, some of it will depend also on the physical environments that we create. Future spaces will be designed to facilitate the use of technology and so reduce the need for travel.
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Theme 4: Encouraging enterprise and engagement Conferences, Collections and Exhibitions Bringing people together is critical to academic and organisational development. Conferences facilitate this. They are an important tool for building our academic reputation and enhancing international collaboration. Furthermore, they provide an additional benefit for the city. Most universities have at least one good facility and the best of them make a net contribution to University income. We have no dedicated conference facilities as present. The University benefits from a growing number of special collections including the War Poets, R L Stevenson, Tagore and the Edward Clark collection. However, we currently have no dedicated space for these collections (as a whole) and limited capacity for creating exhibitions that are open to the public. The War Poets display is small and cramped. Furthermore, we have limited archival facilities, an important and often neglected aspect of university life. Consequently, it is proposed that new spaces be developed to provide high quality conference facilities, house collections and facilitate exhibitions, probably as part of a general expansion of the Craiglockhart campus.
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9. Enterprise The University is committed to building a culture of enterprise and social engagement. Our estate will reflect this ambition. Whilst we work with partners such as E-spark and have invested in the Moffat Centre and Bright Red Ventures to support students and graduates of Edinburgh Napier who want to set up and run their own businesses, our provision is patchy and disparate. We have several modest spaces, but no single enterprise “hub” and limited visibility. We will therefore develop fresh spaces for our enterprise activities under the Bright Red Triangle banner. Working with partners in the city and beyond, we shall provide a vibrant and dynamic environment to help start and grow young businesses and develop the entrepreneurial spirit and culture of the university. Partners The University is committed to working in partnership with others, and our estate will reflect that commitment. For example the Edinburgh International College will be integrated within a main campus building. Our interaction with business will likewise be reflected in our enhanced provision for executive education, which is currently delivered via the Edinburgh Institute at Craiglockhart. We are committed also to developing stronger partnerships with our local communities. We wish each of our main sites to be regarded by our communities as a local asset. We will aim at each site to be “the campus in the community”, making our facilities more widely available to local people and others through a programme of community outreach beyond our present commitment to doing this through sport.
Finally, we are unusual in having very few “branded” spaces apart from our Starbucks coffee outlets, which are extremely popular. We shall consequently seek to identify more spaces from which third-party providers can operate to the benefit of students and staff. Using our estate more efficiently The overall utilisation of our centrally-booked teaching rooms is modest, and below the sector average. We must use these spaces more effectively, in part by changing the way that we timetable our teaching. At the same time we shall improve the design of our offices to release capacity that can be used more directly to support our academic ambitions, including research, postgraduate study, social interaction, and student-centred activity. By embracing technology and promoting the development of mobile and flexible modes of work we will create inspirational office environments that deliver space efficiencies and enhance staff engagement. The balance between private and social space will change. Offices will generally be open-plan, but desks will be set in small clusters to encourage collaboration and collegiality. Coffee stations and chill-out areas will be provided to stimulate interaction, and there will be more informal seating and quiet pods for concentrated work and confidential discussions.
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What does all of this mean in terms of our campuses and new developments? With respect to our physical infrastructure, we plan to: • expand Craiglockhart to include conference and exhibition/archive facilities • invest in new facilities for Engineering and the Built Environment, releasing space at Merchiston • develop Merchiston as a hub for computing and the creative industries • develop one more student residence for c250 students in a convenient and affordable location Within that broad strategic framework there are options for consideration, some of which may be contingent on circumstances.
Some issues and options Initial feasibility studies suggest that the capacity for further development within our existing estate is around 7,000m2 at Sighthill, 6,000m2 at Craiglockhart and below 1,000m2 at Merchiston. If each of the three sites were to be fully developed over the next ten years, we would increase our gross internal area from around 70,000m2 to about 84,000m2. This would provide us with 20% more space overall, but leave no room whatsoever for further expansion. This would not be a responsible strategy to adopt for the long-term. We know that there is limited room to locate a new facility for Engineering and the Built Environment on any of our campuses and so we are actively considering a range of options.
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Chapter 4 Finance and Funding
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Finance and Funding Initial assessments suggest that we shall need to invest at least one hundred million over the next ten years in order to realise these ambitions, split roughly as follows: • £20m (minimum) to expand Craiglockhart • £20m (minimum) for Engineering, • £10m (minimum) to redevelop Merchiston for computing and the creative industries • £50m (minimum) over ten years for refurbishment and modernisation
The University’s approach to asset ownership and the nature of the assets themselves will affect the funding option utilised. A mixed approach is planned. The aim of this strategy should be to access third-party funding only to the extent required to deliver our objectives. Funding for each major project will be considered on a case-by-case basis, following a thorough assessment of the options, including tax implications.
Business cases will be developed for all significant projects. These will be appraised against objective criteria, including the financial case and the impact of each project on the University’s strategic objectives. Where projects are seen as viable, these will be evaluated alongside other pressures and opportunities facing the University at that time. When considering options that propose increasing overall space, there should be consideration of how existing spaces could be repurposed or rescheduled and/or how improved planning could negate the requirement. As part of the capital investment options appraisal process, projects that limit our future exposure to revenue costs, such as energy, maintenance or other operating costs, will be encouraged. Financial analyses should take account of whole life costs. The University has a strong financial track record, both in delivering surpluses and in securing commercial loans, which have been repaid promptly. During the period of this strategy, we shall consider a broader range of funding options, including: • • • • • •
Bank debt Private placement Public bonds Commercial partnerships Fundraising Sale and lease-back arrangements
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Chapter 5 Implementation
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Implementation The following chart outlines the proposed timeline for development. 2015
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2020
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Phase 1 - Expand Craiglockhart - Agree residential development
Phase 2 - New build for Engineering - Establish conference centre - Targeted redevelopment of Merchiston - New residence comes on stream
Phase 3 - Full redevelopment of Merchiston - Other developments TBA
Invest in active and social learning spaces Ensure planned and reactive maintenance keeps with capital investment Annual review of priorities
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Appendices
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Appendices Supporting Estate Strategy 2015-2025 documents are held within the University Intranet at https://staffworkplace.napier.ac.uk/Services/Facilities/ ESPB 2015 - 2025 Docs/ The information contained within this site supports the statements and data references contained with the Estate Strategy 2015-2025 document. The information in some cases is commercially sensitive, and for this reason some of it is limited to Members of Court and associated Committees, ULT, lay advisors and selected others. The supporting documentation within is divided into six categories: • • • • • •
University Strategies Consultations and SWOT Staff and Student Projected Growth Initial Feasibility Studies Space Statistics University Visits
Endnotes The following notes indicate reference for source images and copyright 1. Steelcase furniture. 2. University of Portland . 3. Case Western University, Ohio. 4. The Place, UNSW Sydney. 5. Carnegie Mellon School of Design. 6. ELCX, Queensland University. 7. University of South Australia. 8. UMEAA School of Architecture. 9. Delft University of Technology. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the University. This publication can be made available in different formats on request. Designed by PRA
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