Campuses are meant to change, develop, and evolve, making construction over time a necessary step towards equipping colleges and universities with the infrastructure to meet the modern needs of the students they serve. By implementing agile building strategies through thoughtful approaches, campuses can create dynamic, future-ready learning environments while minimizing student life and operations disruption.
When initiating these projects, facilities managers can work closely with project managers to employ strategies to design spaces for future flexibility and balance academic calendars with construction timelines and financial constraints with project necessities.
The Vital Role of Project Managers
The role of the project manager as an owner’s representative throughout this process cannot be overstated. This position has the best interests of the campus at heart, advocating for the optimal path forward and coordinating between campus safety, environmental health & safety (EH&S) and the contractor. On an active campus, this allows administrators to continue their important work on other initiatives while construction continues. Without this role there to facilitate these conversations and connections, they would not happen; these are the individuals spearheading the consideration of qualitative measures throughout a project from a bird’s eye view.
For example, suppose barriers need to be erected to protect students from active construction zones. In that case, owner’s representatives may be the ones to voice that typical chain link barriers could be swapped for ones that are more aesthetically pleasing. These could even be interactive and educational, outfitted with project statistics and updates or some of the interesting design or sustainability features that informs passersby on project updates. Those in different roles, such as the contractor, are focused on completing their tasks and may not see things from the same perspective, allowing opportunities for thoughtfulness and consideration for campus life to potentially slip through the cracks.
Having a representative or project manager bring this perspective is crucial, as not only does it provide an advocate for preserving the quality of campus life, but it also alleviates some of the responsibility of a facilities manager. This partnership results in well-thought-out construction processes that result in beautiful facilities and satisfied students and staff.
Maintaining Campus Life During Construction
Scheduling renovations of existing spaces or general construction with attention to the student experience is essential to maintaining the quality of life on campus––no one wants to listen to jackhammering during finals week or graduation or lose access to amenities in the middle of the school year. For some students, a single building project could span their entire college career; a project must not negatively impact their overall college campus experience.
The main goal in the partnership between facilities managers and project managers should be to minimize student interaction with the negatives of construction, limiting the disruption a project may cause as much as possible. The approach should vary by the scale of campus; smaller campuses may offer a more limited number of pathways for students and staff to navigate around a site, while larger campuses provide the flexibility to more easily create detours for different areas across the campus with less impact.
The project manager should engage various groups across campus jurisdictions to make the process move as seamlessly as possible. These can include student affairs, the facilities and construction departments, and the contractor. In some cases, the university may want to involve the students themselves. Aligning these groups toward a common goal creates more transparency between each team, increasing efficiencies overall.
The first step to establishing a project schedule is defining the overall project goals and paving the way for accomplishing them. In the case of higher education projects, this is most often defined by having spaces completed and available by a particular semester. For example, student residences need to be available and ready to occupy by the summer before the fall semester. The goals may be established for athletic buildings based on a specific sport’s season, determining when a facility needs to be available for training.
Once that foundation is set, it is essential to review the academic calendar, identifying opportunities to coordinate work around campus activities efficiently. Significant events, such as move-in and move-out, graduation, and exam periods, should be at the forefront of conversation; from there, other social, athletic, and administrative events should also be taken into consideration when deciding on the timing and location of construction.
Project typology is another factor. If a building has a classroom or residential purpose, most of the work will likely occur during winter, spring, or summer recess. However, athletic arenas, gymnasiums, or other recreational spaces will follow a different timeline. If you’re working on a basketball arena, you’ll want to complete most of that work in the offseason so new and improved facilities are ready to host teams and spectators come the next season. That means ensuring that materials have arrived, and trades are organized to begin as soon as the last game ends. Overall, it’s best to plan as far out in advance as possible; even if a project is a year out from groundbreaking, begin slotting construction into the schedule now to provide stakeholders with as much notice as possible to prepare and adjust their operations as needed.
Navigating Financial Challenges and Rising Construction Costs
Rising construction costs present another challenge for completing projects on time and within budget, particularly for institutions with fixed funds or endowments. A strong project team can turn difficult choices into creative decisions, especially on campuses where nostalgia or history may play a role in how changes are perceived.
It is crucial to set realistic budget goals at the start. During the programming phase, all stakeholders must meet to flesh out what components are necessary to fulfill the building’s function. From there, the team can begin to separate projects’ wants from needs, filtering out unnecessary additions or adjustments to home in on the space’s purpose.
Compromise cannot be made when it comes to a building fulfilling its purpose, but it’s the project manager’s job to try to include as many of the stakeholder “wants” as can possibly be afforded.Additionally, project managers must recognize that “wants,” while different than “needs,” can profoundly impact the quality of the spaces delivered and thus, should be creatively prioritized in the design and budget. Progress should be evaluated at each design deliverable to track against the original budget goals. Once those estimates are in hand, the evaluation process can begin to determine whether a project is on track and if the budget is aligned. If it’s not, value engineering must be used to propose more cost-efficient design solutions. No one wants to sacrifice their wants, but some changes have larger consequences than others, and it can be difficult for some stakeholders to see which ones those are until they’re tangible.
Project managers must also collaborate with facilities managers very early on in the process to outline the operational and managerial plans for the project post-delivery, including a thorough review of the facilities manager’s standards and existing building management systems (BMS). It’s essential to understand how buildings are serviced, how utilities are fed and maintained, and how systems like trash removal, heating, and cooling are managed.
Value engineering must be handled professionally and methodically. Big line items or a large piece of the scope are easy to run down the list and strike out, but this can be a short-sighted way to get back on track. Those cuts may be pieces of a larger puzzle that ultimately impacts the functionality of the building itself or the user experience. Remember that students (and often research) are at the core of these projects to help keep things in balance. A structured process should be in place when discussing how to and what to start reducing in reviewing budgets.
Value engineering must be handled professionally and methodically. Big line items or a large piece of the scope are easy to run down the list and strike out, but this can be a short-sighted way to get back on track.
As with any project, it’s important to kick off by meeting with a client to determine the goals, ensuring they’re realistic to the proposed budget and timeline–owner’s representatives are responsible not only for managing the project’s goals but also for managing the client’s expectations. This is where project managers can leverage experience, market data, and existing relationships, like with cost estimating firms, who can provide insight on swaths of real-time industry data to ensure budget planning is reliant on accurate pricing resources. It’s critical for an owner’s representative to offer informed advice and communicate realistically about achieving project criteria to avoid disappointment.
Having informed, transparent discussions up front help to set everyone up with realistic expectations. This builds upon the relationships formed and maintains them throughout the project. University stakeholders should never feel like they’re settling and compromising for a building. Every university makes decisions that are future-forward and long-term, requiring tremendous capital investments based on their institution’s goals.
That leads to the topic of navigating these, at times, difficult discussions that lead clients to a more realistic vision of the project through the wants vs. needs. Once the needs are determined, how is the list of wants sorted through and prioritized? Logical, data -driven conversations about the cost impacts of competing wants can help paint a clearer picture of where the best value for spend lies.
Project managers would be able to step in and foresee issues such as the durability of materials, efficiency of floorplans, and appropriate electrical capacity. This underscores the importance of evaluating the long-term and qualitative impacts of these cost decisions on the students and facilities that will be the end users of a space. That’s where you present the “wants” options backed by thought and data with the occupant experience in mind.
Facilitating Success Through Phase One
Flexibility is a core pillar in producing impactful academic spaces, informing the adaptation and evolution of infrastructure within the educational landscape. Project and facilities managers can work together to tee up a successful project from phase one, even if the funding or means to meet every goal aren’t available now; designating spaces that can be fitted out or modified during later phases when conditions change. This make-ready space helps build flexibility down the line when further funding or resources may become available.
Futureproofing is a conversation many project managers are having now, even for spaces that are years out from completion. For example, our team is spearheading a mixed-use residential project for a college that is set to house dormitories, laboratories, and classrooms. An entire floor was white boxed in the building during the design phase, creating a canvas to be shaped to the future needs of the institution or its faculty, whatever they may be. In creating these spaces to be utilized for generations, we’re looking at measures we can take in the present to streamline adjustments that will be made 10, even 20 years from now.
From a technology standpoint, many conversations are happening around the use of AI in education–we’re at an interesting point where institutions understand that this will play a large role moving into the future, but it is unclear exactly what that role will be. Though the curriculum has yet to be developed, current construction projects should incorporate the means to facilitate this implementation now. Any new building should have the appropriate electric and equipment storage capacity to accommodate technological shifts.
To prime physical spaces for future modifications, facilities managers should work alongside their project management partners to install proper HVAC capacity IT network lines and movable walls. These contingencies create the freedom for higher education facilities to embrace different pedagogies over time; whether an approach involves different seating layouts, fluctuating class sizes, or even hybrid learning, these environments can make it happen. Having conversations about the different potential ways a classroom may be used many years down the line is important for ensuring utilities are routed accordingly. Reducing the infrastructure in a partition wall (such as power and plumbing lines) makes it much easier and more cost-effective to change it later.
This proactive planning and design approach minimizes the construction and maintenance of spaces in the future, saving institutions money while also reducing the frequency of interruptions to campus life and operations across generations.
Looking Ahead
There’s always a level of uncertainty about what the future will bring. As student and faculty expectations change alongside shifts in external market forces, campus facilities managers will continue to face complex decisions about how best to adapt. Those pressures will also inevitably impact construction costs, needs, and timelines. Working alongside a thoughtful project management partner, who serves as both a resource and advocate, to navigate this landscape helps ensure that an institution makes the best choices for the quality and resilience of its campus life.
Sabeel Yosef is senior project manager at Group PMX in New York, NY. They can be reached at [email protected]. This is their first article for Facilities Manager.
