Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Useful or Frivolous?

  • By Shannon O'Connor
  • 02/01/18

This February issue of College Planning & Management includes our annual Facilities & Construction Brief. For this report, we surveyed you, our readers, to ask about construction on your campuses. You generously provided information on what projects have been recently completed, as well as plans for construction that will wrap up or get underway this year.

The outlook is not bleak. More than three-quarters of respondents completed construction projects in 2017. Close to three-quarters of respondents indicated that they will complete projects this year, and as many will start projects this year as well.

You are balancing these campus improvements—because whether new-from-the-ground-up, additions, or renovations, these construction projects are improving campus life—against a number of challenges. Challenges that include budget and funding issues (although 39 percent saw no change in available funds and 18 percent noted that more funds are becoming available for construction); complying with local, state, and federal rules and regulations; deferred maintenance backlogs on existing building stock; timing and scheduling constraints; customer (student, administrative, community) expectations; labor and materials availability and quality concerns; weather; and more.

Looking forward to the April issue, we will be featuring our annual Campus Housing Report. The survey underway for that report asks not only nuts-and-bolts questions about what residential projects have been completed, are in the works, or are on the boards (as this Facilities & Construction Brief survey did), but also asks about amenities included within those facilities. If we had asked for these details in the Facilities & Construction Brief, the answers would involve everything from replacing the leaky roof on the campus library to constructing a multi-million-dollar sports, recreation, and fitness facility with amenities that include a hydrotherapy suite, movie theater, climbing wall, and lazy river.

A lazy river?

Yes. Albeit a somewhat small trend, several institutions have installed lazy river features in their athletic facilities… at considerable cost and, in the opinion of many, the epitome of “unnecessary.” Still, one school’s “unnecessary” may be another school’s most successful tool for recruiting and retaining students, faculty, and staff.

Campus facilities are not, and never will be, one-size-fits-all. Whether features included in your projects are considered useful or frivolous, you continue to design, build, furnish, and maintain the very best facilities you can. And you get the job done.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management February 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • Planning with Clarity: Using AI to Make Better Campus Decisions, Not Just Better Designs

    Higher education leaders are being asked to make increasingly high-stakes decisions about campus facilities amid greater uncertainty than ever before. Social and economic pressures, shifting enrollment, and evolving learning models compete with growing deferred maintenance needs to strain even the most robust infrastructure budgets.

  • Virginia Tech Tops Out New College of Engineering Building

    Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., recently celebrated the topping out of Mitchell Hall, which will soon stand as the largest College of Engineering building on campus, according to a news release. The university partnered with Skanska on the 285,500-square-foot facility, which has an expected completion date of winter 2028.

  • Children walking along bright school corridor with motion blur

    How Next-Gen Design Is Reshaping the Student Experience

    The environments where students learn play a crucial role in shaping their growth in and out of the classroom. By centering design on well-being, flexibility, and purpose, districts can ensure their facilities remain vibrant community assets for many years to come.