Monday 2 June 2008

From Edison to iPod

Friday saw my first meeting with one of the new Faculty PVCs - I'm trying to get round them all in the next couple of weeks to start a dialogue about how we can best support them in their new role, and make some suggestions about how we might handle IT support in the new structure. It was a very positive (and fun!) meeting, and I learnt a lot - especially about the history of music recording!

Today a few senior colleagues from the professional services talked how we might take forward some thematic discussions about 3 key strategic areas - the student experience, research performance and internationalisation. We'll be having some more in-depth discussions over the next month to look at synergies between the different departments and also identifying gaps and priorities for development.

It was appropriate perhaps just after we learnt about the IC winning the RIBA award that today was the Post Occupancy Evaluation of the project. I took part in a three and a half hour meeting where we went right back to the original drivers for the project, the business case, the brief, appointment of consultants etc. Given that we (CiCS and the Library) had the original idea in about 1998, and started the business case in 1999, we had to really test our memory to go back that far. The meeting had representatives of the architects, consultants, project managers, construction company as well as the user clients. It was basically a lessons learnt exercise (perhaps the main one being try and finish a building before you actually open it), and there were many which will be applied to future projects.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Were students, staff and other people who use and maintain the building on a daily basis included in the Post Occupancy Evaluation?

You mentioned evaluation of the building in terms of the project team's original intentions. Was there any evaluation of the building in terms of its actual/desired uses?

Unknown said...

Hi

Yes, staff and students who use and work inthe building were interviewed - in a separate meeting which took place this morning

Anonymous said...

We evaluated an info commons /library late last year, and (arguably) the occupants' only significant problem involved behaviour protocols so students didn't interrupt one another in silent and quiet study areas. Did this issue arise in your evaluation and, if so, what recommendations did the evaluation generate to help the situation?

Unknown said...

Hi - haven't seen the results of the evaluation yet so don't know. Our experience is that in general the quiet areas are self policing, but we do have to introduce more of them in busty periods such as exam time. I'll post a summary of the evaluation when we have it.