Embracing the Right Questions: Planning Spaces for Science

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) offers a wealth of useful resources and events. In its online publication, Volume V: Then, Now & In the Next Decade, the latest issue is titled Embracing the Right Questions: Planning Spaces for Science.

This entry also references parts of PKAL Volume IV: What Works, What Matters, What Lasts:

Anticipating Renovating: This seminar, in conjunction with the National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance (NCIAA) and co-sponsored by Herman Miller, was part of a series of PKAL activities focusing on the relationship of space and learning. These questions and insights are being incorporated into planning for upcoming PKAL activities relating to planning facilities for undergraduate learners.

Asking the Right Questions: Toward Building Communities: Community is the spirited enactment of the conviction that ideas are important, and that they gain life when people bring different perspectives to their consideration. Communities embrace a common vision, yet allow— even promote— difficult dialogues. This is the challenge to leaders, within the faculty and the administration, as your planning proceeds.

Collecting Questions From the Field: Burning Questions from the 2006 Facilities Workshop: Meredith College

Understanding Key Questions: After more than a decade of significant activity in imagining, planning, constructing, and using new spaces for natural science communities on our nation’s campuses, it seemed prudent to step back, to ask if old questions are still relevant and what new questions are emerging. It seemed equally important to begin to gather thoughts of architects and other reflective practitioners from the design professional world about questions for the future.

University of California-Irvine, Anteater Recreation Center (ARC) Expansion

American School & University Magazine's current issue has a useful project report on the new University of California-Irvine, Anteater Recreation Center (ARC) Expansion.

The ARC expansion provides 20,000 more assignable square feet for a weightroom, and classrooms for dance and martial arts. It also includes a contemporary fitness/wellness center, physical-therapy rooms, a body-composition system to measure body fat, and cutting-edge technology for cardiovascular and metabolic analysis. . . . Redefining agrarian for the 21st century, the design team created a modern “farm” building with steel trusses, pitched roofs, and split-face concrete block and glass. Classrooms have sprung floors and mirrored walls.

Energy Utilities and Sustainability

APPA's Facilities Manager magazine does one of the best jobs in higher education at consistent, regular theme issues on important topics. Its current March/April 2009 issue is an exemplar, with the theme of "Energy Utilities and Sustainability." Articles include: "Campus Climate Neutrality - Yes We Can! It's a Big Challenge, But Here's How to Do It" (PDF) by Walter Simpson; "Carbon Emissions Trading and Combined Heat and Power Strategies: Unintended Consequences" (not yet available on line) by John C. Tysseling, Mary Vosevich, Benjamin R. Boersma, and Jeffery A. Zumwalt; "National Trends in Sustainability Performance: Lessons from Facilities Leaders" (PDF) by Kristy M. Jones and L. Julian Keniry; and "LEDs: DOE Programs Add Credibility to a Developing Technology" by Susan Conbrere (not yet available on line).

300% Over Budget?

Ouch. It's not hard to imagine the angst of being involved with the planning of this project:

For starters, what was supposed to be a $40-million project — with a $26-million contribution from the philanthropist Eli Broad, an alumnus — was at one point estimated at a whopping $160-million, according to the university’s president, Lou Anna K. Simon. The university’s associate provost for academic services, Linda Stanford, told the News that the design was being changed and that it would indeed end up “close to $40-million.”

Tough Times, Silver Lining: Builders Lower Their Bids

As Scott Carlson puts it, in this article, "Now is a great time for colleges to get bids on construction projects — if they have the money to pay for them." It's nice to know that someone we know will be saving money. Bottom line: Materials costs are going down and construction people are offering lower cost bids. But not everyone is in a position to benefit:

Over the past several years, colleges have endured eye-popping escalation in the cost of campus construction, with the budgets swelling by more than 40 percent in some cases. The increases resulted from similarly rising costs for energy and petroleum-based building materials, and from growing demand for staples like steel and cement amid a booming construction market, both overseas and in the United States. Construction firms consistently bid high because of the demand for their work and to cover the risk of escalating costs on materials.

But times have changed. As the financial, housing, and major-construction markets have headed toward meltdowns, those same construction firms are looking for jobs, even while the prices of energy and materials have fallen. The prices of essential construction materials like structural steel, cement, and lumber are all expected to decline through 2009, according to Engineering News-Record, a trade magazine for the construction industry, published by McGraw-Hill. Because of those declines, building costs are likely to go down slightly this year.

In Connecticut, Building Plans Hit the Skids

This article's "blurb" ends with a phrase that we all should be thinking about as we slash and burn budgets of various sorts: "The governor's budget freeze has put state school projects on ice, but [W]ill it really save money? (emphasis added) And SCUPer Nancy Tinker of Eastern Connecticut State University is interviewed to help make the point:

But that's not how Nancy Tinker, director of facilities, management and planning at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, sees it. Tinker says an extra year will make a big difference, because time is money — money lost — and in "no place is that more true than in the construction industry."

"In the long run, unless you cancel a project altogether, you don't save anything by delaying things," says Tinker. "It actually costs the taxpayers more, or the taxpayers get less than they could have for the same amount of money."

To prove her point, Tinker cites ECSU's planned $71.5 million fine arts building, a project she describes as "critical" to the school's stated goal of becoming the state's premier public liberal arts college. Planning for the fine arts center was completed in 2000, when the cost was estimated at $54 million; eight years later it has gone up by $17.5 million, or 32 percent.

"When they finished the [planning] in 2000, they didn't think it was going to take eight years to get to the next phase," says Tinker.

Harvard Slows Its Growth in a Boston Neighborhood

We don't know if this is going "from eating brie to cheddar," but even Harvard University is finding that the financial crisis has an impact on its expansion plans into the Allston neighborhood:

The university is reviewing its plans for a four-building, $1 billion science center in Allston, which is across the Charles River from the Cambridge campus. It was scheduled to be completed in 2011.

The university plans to finish the complex’s foundation and build to ground level, but plans after that are uncertain.

“As we approach the end of the current construction phase,” the university president, Drew Gilpin Faust, said in a letter to the Harvard community, “we will examine whether economic conditions are enough improved to allow us to continue construction, or whether to reconfigure the building in ways that yield either new cost savings or new space realization, or whether we need to pause construction.”

Shovels Ready? At Ease!

We can't get at the precise final language of the House and Senate compromise on the stimilus package, but while there is lots of money in it - in various places - for higher education, the dollars intended for "shovel ready" renovation and upgrading projects seems to have turned into something like a handful of snowflakes in July: Some general dollars given to state governors to do with as they wish, without a restriction saying that they can't use them for upgrading facilities. One anonymous SCUPer writes to us:

Amazing as it is that the President, House of Representatives and a majority (albeit a simple majority) in the Senate wanted to fund nearly $16 billion for school construction, this stimulus opportunity was collapsed into the state stabilization funding *an increase of $6.6 billion in lieu of K12 funding and an increase of $3.4 billion to states in lieu of the higher ed facility funding. But the school districts will have to fight with the states over whether or not it gets spent on school construction, because there is no mandate to spend it in this way.

Few of the SCUPers we have spoken with today believe that much of those dollars will do anything but help governors do a slightly better job of balancing their budgets. Whether any of the dollars end up in facilities renovation depends pretty much on whatever system is currently in place within each state, and many governors have already shown their readiness to cut off building projects to move dollars elsewhere.

As one SCUPer commented this morning, "There's something in there (or not) to make just about anyone angry."

Embedding Nature in the Built Environment

The designers among us will want to read this article. We wish we had time to follow the links in it.

In a recent Yale University podcast, Steve Kellert, professor at the university's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and editor of the book The Biophilia Hypothesis, speaks of biophilia as an essential part of sustainable design. The general concept of sustainable or green design focuses on minimizing or avoiding the harmful effects on the natural environment. Kellert's argument is, “that [it] is necessary but not sufficient to achieve sustainability. That if you achieve that effect in a building—a hermetically sealed skyscraper where people are working in windowless environments—that won't be sustainable because basically those environments do not produce physical and mental wellbeing.” (http://www.healthcaredesign magazine.com/YalePodcast)

Because physical and mental wellbeing is top concern for a hospital, exploring the biologically based bond between humans and nature is especially important in these environments where medical technology and products seem to be an antithesis to nature.

Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education

Sam Dillon wrote this article for The New York Times, which also has a special "Times Topics" Web section on the stimulus package.

The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.

The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.

HR1 - The Stimulus Package - Download the Whole Thing

You can download a PDF of the House Bill 1 (the stimulus package) here (PDF). The higher education portion begins on page 180 and is section 9302, "Higher Education Modernization, Renovation, and Repair."

Clearinghouse Website: Federal Funding Stimulus for School Facilities

SCUPer Judy Marks, who is the associate director of the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities (NCEF), made a point of letting us know about that organizations newest addition to its vast collection of educational facilities-related annotated bibliographies:

The National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities has just added a new webpage, Federal Funding Stimulus for School Facilities, to the NCEF website.

The first webpage section, "Status of the School Funding Stimulus," describes the school-related elements of the January 15th draft House bill. This section will be continually updated as the house and senate bills proceed through Congress.

The second section, "What You Can Do Now," provides advice on the most effective way of spending the stimulus funds. We will be adding much more to this section over the next week.

There are four additional sections, "Funding Stimulus News," "Related Events," "Recent Journal Articles," and "Related NCEF Resource Lists." We will continually add information to these.

Anticipating Stimulus Money for Campus Projects, Colleges Get 'Shovel Ready'

Scott Carlson, of The Chronicle of Higher Education, recently wrote a must-read article about the stimulus package, and he's arranged for SCUPers to have an unprotected link to read it. Thanks, Scott.

The billions of dollars in the bill before Congress would be distributed through the Department of Energy and through state higher-education agencies, in the form of grants and loans. Of the $7-billion, at least $2.5-billion would go toward energy-efficiency projects certified by programs like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. (The legislation also includes $500-million for training in green jobs.)

In awarding the money to institutions, the bill's language specifies, state higher-education agencies should give preference to colleges that serve large numbers of minority students, have been hit by a natural disaster, or are planning energy-efficiency projects. The money should not go to new construction, sports facilities, or facilities used for religious worship or divinity schools.

The language or the amounts in the bill could change as Congress debates the stimulus measure, which legislators are expected to make final within the next few weeks. For now, colleges are preparing lists of projects that are "shovel ready," should the money roll down from Washington. The bill includes "use it or lose it" requirements: At least half of the money would have to be spent within a year of the measure's being enacted, and the rest within two years.

R U Shovel Ready? New Email List to Use to Stay Informed

Judging by the emails and phone calls we receive, the entire higher education world is buzzing with preparations to be "shovel ready" for the forthcoming stimulus package funding. We've created a topical email list for those who might like to be connected with others on this topic. You can join it via the Web here or you can join it by sending a message to "shovelready-request@umich.edu" with the word "subscribe" in the Subject line (no quotes in what you type). Anyone can join, there is no fee or SCUP membership requirement.

We're also gauging right now whether there are other ways SCUP might be helpful to people regarding "shovel ready"—the difficulty is, of course, that things are moving with lightning speed, which leave little time to think, plan, and implement any kind of resource.

Amid a California Construction Freeze, L.A. Community Colleges Push Forward With Plans

It's one characteristic of the current financial crisis, that it is affecting different kinds of institutions, in different places, in different ways. And that's even before the stimulus package is available for our "shovel ready" projects:

The University of California and California State University systems have both suspended construction projects. The shutdown could affect some $1-billion in projects in the Cal State system alone, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

But apparently the California suspension doesn’t affect plans at the Los Angeles Community College District. The Los Angeles Times reports that the community-college district is pushing ahead with $400-million in projects on its $5.7-billion plan, one of the largest higher-education expansion plans in the country.

Nurses Organize Around the Planning Table

After a conference in 2005, a bunch of nurses got together and decided to create some reosurces to enable better input from nurses into the design of health care facilities.So they created the Nursing Institute for Healthcare Design (NISD). We have to wonder if this kind of initiative might work for other professionals with an interest in ther design of the built environment?

First of all, nurse leaders are being invited to the table, and the chief nursing officer is now considered one of the executives of the hospital. So now, instead of a director of nursing, there are chief nursing officers who are considered higher-level executives making higher-level decisions. They get to the planning table and don't have the information and preparation they need because we didn't have anything about healthcare construction in nursing school.

Through the online resource they can be inspired by knowing that there are nurses out there who are knowledgeable and could be a resource on this subject. “NIHD Connect” is where we pull together basic healthcare design and construction information—articles, videos, books, and links—we find about such topics as patient room design, hospital unit design, noise in the work place, and safety features. A lot of those design features deal with patient safety and infection control. You know, my mother knows you should put the sink by the door, but is this being done everywhere? So by reading some of this basic information about healthcare design and construction, the nurse leader will be equipped so she or he at least knows what to advocate for at the planning table. Or, if something doesn't ring true, they know where to go and dig deeper into the topic.

Oberlin: Where does the nurse-designer collaboration process need improvement?

Hayes: I think architects still have a tendency to discount the nurses' views, and sometimes that is because the nurses may not be giving the best answers. For example, I might ask a nurse at one hospital and they might tell me one thing, and then I ask a nurse at another hospital and she tells me the complete opposite. So if the architects are not getting good answers from the nurses, they may decide not to pay attention to them and only include them as a courtesy. And the problem may be that the nurses are telling them different things because of the way they are using the space or because of a lack of knowledge that, yes, you do need to put the sinks by the door.

Federal Stimulus Funding for School Modernization, Renovation, and Repair

We bet you and others on your campus have been thinking a lot about "shovel ready" projects? (We're talking $6B here!) So have the great folks at the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities (thanks to SCUPer Judy Marks for the info) who have created this new Web page category for related information:

The first webpage section, "Status of the School Funding Stimulus," describes the school-related elements of the January 15th draft House bill. This section will be continually updated as the house and senate bills proceed through Congress.

The second section, "What You Can Do Now," provides advice on the most effective way of spending the stimulus funds. We will be adding much more to this section over the next week.

There are four additional sections, "Funding Stimulus News," "Related Events," "Recent Journal Articles," and "Related NCEF Resource Lists." We will continually add information to these.

College Recreational Sports: Pivotal Players in Student Success

From the January–February–March 2009 issue of Planning for Higher Education, this "SCUP Links Blog" post provides an opportunity for you to share comments or additional resources/links about the focus of the article, College Recreational Sports: Pivotal Players in Student Success, v37n1, pp. 52–62 by Kent J. Blumenthal. You can read the entire article here [LINK TO COME], in Planning for Higher Education.

The article "blurb" reads: The importance of a bona fide campus recreation sports/wellness program cannot be overstated.

[ABSTRACT TO COME]

Note that this issue of Planning is the second of a two-part themed volume with the overall title, Student Life. The first part was published in October 2008. Assembled, the two parts will be available later in 2009 for purchase as a single PDF document for your quick and easy reference.

Solutions for the Design-Versus-Budget Challenge

This article by Ellen Kollie is blurbed: "How do you get everything you want — and need — in the design of new facilities when the project budget doesn't match the shopping list? The answer comes from the experts who are in the trenches daily. They've seen technology and space requirements increase and budgets decrease, and they have at their ready an arsenal of tools to assist administrators."

Many administrators will only complete one new building in their professional lifetimes. This factor, coupled with the enormous number of decisions that must be made, make it even more difficult to come out ahead in the design-versus-budget challenge. In closing, Meadows returns to the plan-early-and-thoroughly approach that his team uses: “We know what we want when we come to the table. We’re not a leaf in the wind. If you’re not clear on what you want, the consultant will drive the situation and make the decisions for you. That’s not where you want to be.”

Construction Waste: It's Not Just Trash Anymore

Of interest:

Don’t throw away that construction and demolition waste. Along with the changing worldview that there is no “away” in “throwaway,” routing waste to the landfill is also expensive. Treating waste as an asset, the Institution Recycling Network (IRN) helps projects divert waste to end markets that pay for the material. With its “waste miser” paradigm, the company provides a single point of contact to manage recyclable materials on construction and demolition projects. Mark Lennon, a principal at IRN, discusses the process, challenges, and benefits of construction and demolition recycling with John Oberlin, HEALTHCARE DESIGN online editor.

***
Oberlin: Can a healthcare system actually make money from its construction and demolition waste?

Lennon: It would be rare that they would make money, but in terms of dropping money to the bottom line or the total impact on a budget, it’s the same thing to save $50,000 as it is to make $50,000. It all goes to the bottom line.