Section A
Starting points
Directions, principles and insights Interest groups
Every higher education institution is a constellation of multiple parts. With hot competition to be selected by students choosing where they want to study, to stick with their choices, then to be satisfied with their university experience, and feel loyal to the institution when they leave, students are the prime audience on most higher education estates teams’ radar now. There is strong evidence that quality of university space is important in students’ higher education experience, and their feelings towards the institution. Campus quality matters.
So do values. The range of concerns that students feel reflects a diversity of social aspiration - from personal success to wider social benefit, with both of these often in the mix. Built environments express cultural values, and students expect a standard of provision that speaks to the significance their university accords to them, that provides the quality they want for the fees they pay, and that projects the success they look to achieve. At the same time, concern for climate resilience sensitises some students to what a campus says about environmental responsibility, when they are deciding on the university that feels right for them.
Interest groups
Estates teams work in a multi-stakeholder context, with all the interest groups involved relevant to their institution’s success. University leaders set ambitions, organisational strategies and policies. Administrative and professional services staff run the show, and the wisdom that happier people deliver kinder and better service is widely accepted, with implications for university workplace accommodation. There is now widespread experience of professional services staff being accommodated in open plan workspace that they like, as well as increasing incidence of their use of workspace on an agile basis.
Academics have long had extensive autonomy in regard to their working practices, resisting the introduction of accommodation principles that they oppose. Their more efficient use of higher education space requires their participation and buy-in to relevant new workspace design, modes of teaching, and attendance norms. These are not all initiatives that estates departments can initiate or manage; their scope is to show what can be achieved beyond inefficient legacy practices.
As the stakeholders who impinge most directly on university space – in strategic as well as myriad detailed ways, Estates teams are critical to the nature and quality of experience that delights or disappoints students, staff and visitors on campus. The sense of welcome they experience (or not), their ease of wayfinding, the perception of security, lights and controls in working order, loos clean and functioning well, events effectively set-up, furniture in good condition and an orderly place, etc.
For campuses to project their institutions at their best, settings should manifest their potential in ready ways. Significant capital provisions can be compromised by ‘last mile’ moves that erode capacity or quality. For example, not procuring furniture for outdoor terrace space can negate its perception as an attractive and useful amenity.
Conference and external lettings teams are key agents whose important work in letting available space to raise revenue and profile for their organisations is facilitated or impeded by its quality and appeal. And while UK institutions are not in the league of their US peers in relying on financial input from alumni and philanthropists, these funders can still make all the difference to the viability of major capital projects, helping to realise facilities that offer tangible value to students.
Public opinion matters
Public sentiment matters to higher education organisations. As a blanket term, ‘the public’ eclipses the diverse interests at play, and the manifold ways that public stakeholders may be affected by – and affect – universities’ physical estates.
Parents
With students the hotly competed for resource, prospective parents are the most obvious public that campuses must positively address. Parents’ first impressions are critical in the reconnaissance visits that young people make with their families. Campus look, feel and profile are potent factors, but people also observe physical conditions, deducing a sense of high, indifferent or low quality, relating to inspiring or perfunctory environments, up-to-date or tired provisions, good maintenance and cleanliness, or apparent neglect. Much of this emanates not just from facilities management, rather from the fundamental infrastructure itself. There is always scope for pleased parents to promote the university or college in their social networks, as well as the potential to provide direct further value as donors later on.
Wellbeing is of rising interest across society and, consciously or not, the extent to which universities project their campuses as safe and stress-free environments will have a bearing on parents’ reactions. Positive impressions are influenced by green landscaping, good lighting, clear signage, and standards of maintenance and cleanliness, not least in facilities like WCs, which people are likely to use on a campus visit.
Neighbours
The town-gown relationship has traditionally been double-edged, with the positive economic and cultural opportunities that universities bring to their localities, alongside – for some local people, a sense of exclusion – perhaps even feeling overrun. Structuring scope for social inclusion and local participation is not entirely in the scope of estates, but providing for physical porosity is. Campuses that can be walked through, public realm amenities and artworks that can be enjoyed by all, and buildings that can be entered at least to floors and zones, that don’t require protection from peering, noise or the risk of theft, all offer physical means to connect the institution to its neighbours.
Achieving workable access to buildings is not straightforward; it requires a balance of considerations to determine feasibility while meeting security requirements. But the progressive principle is openness to and sharing with the locality, rather than barricading neighbours. In return, the institution’s students are welcome in local facilities off the campus, expanding the provisions available for their use and enriching their experience.
A specific aspect of neighbourliness is managing and mitigating the disruptive impacts of construction projects. There’s clear evidence that considerate contracting matters both to the ongoing life on campus – its efficiency and safety, and to those who live and work in the ambit of campus construction. Whether campus infrastructure is being demolished and rebuilt, or recycled, there are excellent precedents to reference and emulate.
Planning authorities
The formal local public has enormous influence on campus development. Being a good neighbour, keeping local councillors and planners abreast of aims, and attentiveness to ways the higher education institution can help support and realise local aspirations are all important pathways universities can take to achieve their desired campus enhancement.
Government
Neither are higher education institutions operational islands. Agendas set by central government shape the de facto context of requirements universities and colleges must meet, with implications for the work and programmes that higher education estates teams must follow. Covid-19 provided clear evidence of this, first with the mandate for higher education to cater for remote access and physical distancing on campuses, and now the drive to resume fuller in-person activities, and pressure for those organisations who could conserve finance through Covid-19 to return excess funds to students.
Emerging competition
Every institution has competitors, abroad and in the UK, and new options and their recognition are an aspect of the contemporary cultural change. The steadfastness with which ‘going to uni’ was assumed to be a path of first choice is challenged now by new approaches. The implications for universities and their estates teams are: to be alert to the changing conversation, to interrogate their institution’s DNA, and to translate that through appropriate expression of the brand values and ethos their university looks to project – now and looking ahead. A university estate can be a powerful lever in communicating this – or a wasted asset. This is a key foundational step in grounding, defining and steering any campus’s estates programme.