Three Things You Can Do to Improve Teaching Space Use (and Save Money)

In this 30-minute webinar (below), we show you three clear things you can focus on to start uncovering these big cost savings. And some simple steps you can take to get the ball rolling. 

And before you dive in, here’s an overview of what they are.

To illustrate our point, in the webinar we look at an average university with 200 teaching rooms and a space utilisation rate of 30%, and show you how raising that rate to 60% saves £2,152,512. Every single year. Jump in at 01:46 to see how we worked this out.

Obviously not every university has 200 rooms – or the capacity to cut the use of 100 of them – but it’s a figure that shows you the scale of opportunity. And even raising your utilisation rate by a few percent can help you make significant savings.

Your space utilisation survey – as mentioned already – will help you to identify where your ghosts are lurking. But the real key to getting rid of them is to stop them from drifting into your timetables in the first place.

This ultimately involves taking a good look at your data collection and management processes. Ghosts generally pop up either because of a breakdown in communication (where bookings no longer needed aren’t removed from data sets), or because inaccurate data is being used in the first place.

Head to 07:30 in the webinar for more on ghost bookings, and how our average 200 room university saves £731,844 (again each year) by chasing them out.

And while we don’t make a habit of comparing ourselves to 80s movie icons, we are a bit like ghostbusters, who can swoop in and help you to chase your ghosts away, too. So, who you gonna call?

Once a year, your curriculum is designed. It determines how courses will be delivered, and what students can expect from the experience when they sign up for them.

But it’s done before timetables are worked up. Meaning as timetablers and space managers, you’re already working within constraints.

Now consider what would happen if you collected curriculum and timetable data at the same time. And the benefits this could bring.

You reduce workload (because data collection only needs to happen once instead of twice).

And you’re able to better match demand and supply.

In fact, by collecting data in this way you can even begin to use supply to influence demand. Say, for example, you have a large number of science labs. With that information fed in at curriculum design stage, you’re much less likely to end up in a scenario where some of those go unused for periods of time, because the curriculum demand isn’t well matched with the actual supply available.

In the webinar, we talk you through joining up these data dots in more detail. Head to 12:46 to hear more.