The Guidelines

Strategic

• Define and agree educational objectives

  What kind of facility is it that you are trying to provide? Is it in line with the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy of the institution? Does it make the strategy a reality? A successful building should reflect the learning and teaching beliefs and attitudes of the organisation.

• Be clear on lines of communication and responsibility

  Operations managers need to be clear on the strategic intent of the space. Equally they need to have authority to direct budgets and management systems to support these objectives. As large-scale space projects inevitably involve a range of managers then 'buy in' to the educational ideas that inform the building is required from all the departments concerned.

• Set up working groups

  Identify and investigate the issues that you think are going to be critical to the project. Develop a process of engagement, ownership and shared understanding by careful articulation of purpose. Invite comment and ideas.

• Understand and respect the requirements of all your stakeholders

  While not everyone's point of view can be accommodated, each is still valid and should be heard.

• Network and Visit as many places as possible

  Not just in the planning phase but also to inform operations - there is much to learn from others.

• Understand scale effects

  How big do you want the facility to be? Should it all be in one place? Where are the natural "fault/break lines"? Does this facility need separate floors with clear divisions of activity between them? What can you achieve, by contrast, by blurring divisions between levels, or the different parts of the whole?

• Understand complexity

  In general simple and uniform activities can be reasonably successfully undertaken in large simple spaces. By contrast more complex activities will call for more complex spaces overall. Be clear therefore that you have understood the degree of complexity that is being planned for. An "IT commons" involves a simple activity; a "social commons" involves a complex set of activities.

• Be prepared to experiment

  Open-Plan Technology-Rich space provides opportunities to explore new styles of learning and teaching. Not all of these will work in the way you expected but you should be willing to experiment, assess what works, and develop it further.

• Beware of trying to do too much

  Recognise how much difference in activity can be accommodated in the space. Avoid trying to do too much, of being "all things to all men" and ending up with no real identity and not doing any one thing properly.