Dynamic Campus Planning: Exploring the Potential to Introduce Flexibility and Adaptability into the Traditional Campus Master Planning Process

Abstract:
With the accelerating rate of change throughout the facilities management industry, facilities professionals can no longer be content to perform in ways they always have. The dynamic forces impacting the evolving needs of our leaders, faculty, and students demand adjustments to remain relevant. Long-range campus master planning is among those practices that must be addressed. In December 2022, researchers launched an effort to study the traditional master planning process and determine if a more dynamic, flexible, and “living” process should be considered.

As an exploratory study, this project is intended to begin a broader discussion and lay a foundation for expanding the possibility of a more dynamic Campus Planning process that considers more than projects and initiatives poignant at the moment of the plan’s inception. These considerations include long and short-term campus plans, educational plans, enrollment and housing projections, student life assessments, sustainability plans, transportation plans, technology and security plans, capital plans, space needs, facility condition assessments, and deferred maintenance plans. To be prescriptive in any capacity diminishes a core underlying principle of the research – that each facility, university, and system is unique and hence requires a plan uniquely structured to the facility or facilities in question.

Principal Investigators:
Cameron Christensen, CEFP, FMP, Princeton University; Jason Wang, Ph.D., California State University Northridge; Marion Bracy, Dillard University (ret.); Nicole Friend, Stenberg Hart; Dana “Deke” Smith, FAIA Emeritus, FbSI, DKS Information Consulting; and Jim Whittaker, Jones Lang LaSalle