Speedy Tips for Successful Space Planning

When you work in space management, the start of the new academic year is never far from your mind. And these helpful tips will prove invaluable.
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Working out the space requirements for a brand new set of courses - and students - is a big task. And a critical one. Making best use of your estate doesn’t just give students and staff an A* experience, it saves money and frees up time that might otherwise be spent dealing with last minute shortages or catastrophes.

No matter how much space modelling experience you have, a quick review of how you interrogate your data never goes amiss.

Below are five things we think it’s helpful to consider (and if you have any tips of your own, we’d love you to share them on our LinkedIn page. We've started a thread on this very topic, so you can pick up tips from others in your community too).

Your top five tips for super space planning

1. Create rules, save headaches later on

If multiple rooms are booked against an activity, delve deeper to see if you can understand why - and save time later. You can then create rules that auto-update your data so it reflects the true demand. For example, a class of 90 booked into 3 rooms, turns into 3 classes of 30, each requiring a room. 

2. Don't ignore missing class sizes

What rules can you create to populate this (important) missing field? Could you pull your missing data from enrollment numbers? 

3. Weed out ad-hoc bookings 

These tend to get added in after a timetable has been published, filling in the time slots not booked for teaching. 

4. Keep an eye out for non-timetabled activities 

For example, art studios may need to be used by students outside of class time. Consult with academic departments so you can be clear on demand (student numbers x study hours) and account for this in your calculations. 

5. And last but not least... 

Check you’re working to a realistic frequency. 80% is a best practice target, but if your university is only achieving a frequency rate of 50% then this is likely unrealistic (without some work to change processes and attitudes, which takes time!). If too high a target is set but not achievable, you’ll only end up providing less space than is needed from a timetabling perspective.

Boost your space planning skills

Need some help calculating teaching space demand using your own timetable data? We can help; find out more about our course: Calculating Space Demand Using a Timetable Data Export.

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