.

SPACE ENHANCEMENT AND MANAGEMENT GROUP

22 June 2016

Terms of Reference for Restructured SEMG Proposal

‘Space Strategy Committee’

Description of paper

  1. This paper provides background information to the proposal of forming the new Space Strategy Committee and proposes its Terms of Reference.

Action requested

  1. SEMG is invited to:
  • note the final Teaching Spaces Review presented to CMG on 1 March – Appendix 1 attached and CMG extract of its minute and
  • discuss the proposed Terms of Reference contained in Appendix 2

Recommendation

3. SEMG is recommended to approve the proposed Terms of Reference.

Background and context

4Central Management Group at its meeting on 1 March 2016 agreed that a reframed Space Enhancement and Management Group be established to provide clear governance and oversight of teaching spaces throughout the University.

Discussion

5. To discuss proposed Terms of Reference in Appendix 2 and ensure that governance on all aspects of space utilisation throughout the University is explicitly clear in the document.

Resource implications

6 Resourcing will be required to underpin the teaching spaces strategy and to provide a more enhanced and formal modelling of teaching spaces and timetabling. It is anticipated that the Teaching Spaces Owner and Teaching Spaces Governance Group will create a detailed teaching spaces strategy that would include a 10-year resourcing plan.

Risk Management

7. Noted in point 53 in Appendix 2.

Equality & Diversity

8. A full equality impact assessment will be carried out any aspect of Governance and Policy to ensure that the University meets its obligations with respect to equality and diversity.

Next steps/implications

9. Terms of Reference once endorsed will progress to Central Management Group for approval.

Consultation

10. Discussions held with Mr Gavin Douglas, Deputy Secretary (Student Experience),

Professor Sarah Cunningham-Burley Assistant Principal, Professor Jonathan Seckl, Vice-Principal Planning, Resources & Research Policy and Mr Gary Jebb, Director of Estates.

Further information

11.Author
Prof Sarah Cunningham-Burley
Assistant Principal Research-led Learning and
Professor Jonathan Seckl, Vice-Principal Planning, Resources and Research Policy
10 June 2016 / Presenter
Professor Jonathan Seckl, Vice-Principal Planning, Resources and Research Policy

Freedom of Information

12. This paper is closed.

Appendix 1

CENTRAL MANAGEMENT GROUP – 1 MARCH 2016 – MINUTE EXTRACT RE TEACHING SPACES REVIEW PAPER PRESENTED.

Teaching Spaces Review

Gavin McLachlan, Chief Information Officer had undertaken an independent, internal review of the issues with teaching spaces experienced during the start of Semester One. CMG considered the outcome of the review, which examined existing policy and processes to identify changes required to ensure that the University could deliver a high quality teaching timetable for staff and students.

CMG noted that the review had indicated there was no single root cause of the issues that had led to classes without booked teaching spaces in the run up to the start of the semester and there was therefore no single, simple solution. Timetabling and teaching space allocation was a complex, multi-layer process that did not have a single point of ownership across the University and was vulnerable to disruption due to the range of requirements in terms of teaching needs, timetable preferences and course choices.

Overall there was evidence of lack of communication, planning and coordination between different areas of the University and a key recommendation was the establishment of clear governance and oversight. It was agreed that it was desirable to utilise existing groups,

where possible and that a refreshed Space Enhancement and Management Group (SEMG) could take on this role, with an appropriate revised membership and remit.

CMG discussed the four primary recommendations outlined in the paper and were supportive of the proposals, while noting the importance of ensuring some flexibility was maintained in the short term as the longer term improvements were implemented.

The outcome of the review was welcomed and endorsed and it was agreed that SEMG would be reframed to take forward the recommendations, with an update to come to a future meeting of CMG.

Below is the paper presented to CMG on 1 March 2016 (Paper B)

Teaching Spaces Review

Description of paper

1. The University Secretary, Sarah Smith, commissioned an independent internal review of the issues with teaching spaces experienced during the start of Semester One, September 2015. This paper presents a summary of the findings and recommendations from that review, headed by the Chief Information Officer, Gavin McLachlan, for CMG’s consideration.

2. The objectives of the review were to examine existing policy and processes; and to identify the changes required to ensure that the University can deliver, within the context of the ongoing Estates development programme, a high quality teaching timetable for staff and students, with high levels of space utilisation.

3. The scope of the review was to examine the impact, issues and root causes that occurred with the allocation and timetabling of teaching spaces across all campuses at the University, for the start of Semester 2015. This included: maintenance and release of teaching spaces by Estates; student numbers; space utilisation; timetabling; allocation; timetabling and room booking systems & processes; and other factors, policies or processes affecting teaching space usage and allocation.

Action requested / Recommendation

4. CMG is asked to discuss the primary recommendations that the University should:

  1. Establish clear governance and ownership of Teaching Spaces;
  2. Create a detailed Teaching Spaces Strategy and Plan;
  3. Create a more simplified, centralised, standardised top-down approach and process to allocating teaching activities;
  4. Implement an enhanced and formal modelling of Teaching Spaces and Timetabling, coupled with a single, up-to-date, accurate capacity plan for the number of available rooms versus the known demand, as well as including an agreed contingency threshold.

5. CMG is also asked to note the further recommendations and to consider any actions required and to approve the recommendations as set out above.

Background and Context

Executive Overview

5. Significant issues were experienced during the start of Semester One in September 2015, concerning teaching spaces. The impact was felt unevenly across different Schools, campuses and courses. Most classes and activities were accommodated, though some at the very last moment.

7.Overall in the Central Area 8% of teaching activity remained unbooked leading into the first days of the Semester. In the King’s Buildings 3% of teaching activities remained unbooked leading into the first days of the Semester. The other three main campuses were relatively unaffected.

8. Through considerable effort; the emergency allocation of staff training rooms for teaching; the emergency re-commissioning of mothballed rooms; and the relocation of classes to other campuses or areas, almost all classes were allocated a room. However, in some cases, this was at the very last minute or after teaching had started. Within those teaching activities and Schools affected, there was a variety of impacts, some of them significant and these are summarised below.

9. Student experience impacts:

  1. Inappropriate or substandard rooms being used for teaching.
  2. Central area classes booked at Holyrood, or other more remote locations, to a level that began to circumvent recognised travel-time constraints.
  3. There was no adequate notification of last minute room changes.
  4. Some courses were booked into different rooms in different weeks, causing student and staff confusion.
  5. There was a “knock on” effect in the lack of flexibility on electives courses that left more students unable to schedule their chosen electives.
  6. Double booking of some rooms.

10. Staff and school impacts:

  1. Schools incurred costs to deal with complaints, re-bookings and compensation.
  2. Considerable stress and extended hours for School and central administration team.
  3. Direct impact on lecturers.
  4. Staff training classes cancelled, held in inappropriate emergency locations or disrupted.
  5. Central area classes booked at Holyrood, other more remote locations or changed to accommodate the lack of spaces.

11. Overall there was reputational damage to the University, especially in the direct experience of students, staff and visiting staff.

12. There was a variety of independent root causes that contributed to the issue with Teaching Spaces. Overall a lack of communication, planning and coordination between different areas of the University led to the issue.

13. Timetabling and teaching spaces allocation is a very complex, hybrid, multi-layer process that is inconsistent across the University. Furthermore, the process itself is long, time-consuming and vulnerable to disruption, confusion or delay. The key factors affecting the failure of the process in September 2015 were:

a)No overall ownership or governance for teaching spaces across the University.

b)The Space Enhancement and Management Group (SEMG) set a University level “frequency of use” target of 70% that resulted in the planned decommissioning of 20 teaching spaces.

c)An additional 41 teaching spaces in the Central area were closed for a large refurbishment programme; small teaching spaces were most affected.

d)A 6% increase in student numbers was not matched with a strategic plan for teaching accommodation.

e)Changes in School and University teaching approach and strategy resulted in both a 10% increase in teaching activities and a greater demand on smaller teaching spaces.

f)A variety of factors including room quality, lack of standardisation and inconsistency of room ownership, led to a lack of flexibility or reluctance within some Schools and departments in terms of the reallocation of their courses to different rooms. These factors played a part in delaying the decision making process.

g)The issue was not discovered and escalated soon enough and there was no clear agreed escalation path.

h)Teaching preferences: there was an uneven demand regarding the time and day of the week desired for teaching activities. This lead to contention for rooms at certain “high preference” times (such as Tuesday and Thursday afternoons) and far lower contention for the morning 9:00 – 11:00 times and all time slots on Fridays.

14. No single factor caused the failure of the process. It was a combination of several independent factors, often steered by independent organisations within the University that led to the overall failure of the process.

Discussion

15. It is the proposal of this paper that the following four primary recommendations be implemented as the minimum actions required to prevent a repeat of the Teaching Spaces allocations issues encountered during September 2015. The conditions for a failure of the teaching spaces capacity management and allocation process have existed for some time and are at risk of reoccurring, unless action towards these recommendations is taken.

16. Primary Recommendations:

a)Establish clear governance and ownership of Teaching Spaces.

b)Create a detailed Teaching Spaces Strategy and Plan.

c)Create a more simplified, centralised, standardised top-down approach and process to allocating teaching activities.

d)Implement an enhanced and formal modelling of Teaching Spaces and Timetabling, coupled with a single, up-to-date, accurate capacity plan for the number of available rooms versus the known demand, as well as including an agreed contingency threshold.

17. Further information on each of these recommendations can be found below.

18. It is recognized that the above primary recommendation may take time to implement, therefore it is further recommended that a number of tactical contingency measures be implemented over the next 4 to 5 months to ensure there is no repeat of the teaching spaces issue in September 2016. These measures are set out in the paper below.

19. These recommendations will create a significantly less complex environment for teaching spaces that will ensure against a repeat of the September 2015 issues, whilst increasing both the quality and efficiency of teaching spaces. In addition, this paper contains a further thirteen recommendations that should drive further increases in both the quality and efficiency of teaching spaces.

20. The full paper is divided into five sections: The Timeline; a full list of Impacts; a full set of Root Causes; a full list of Recommendations; and an appendix.

Timeline

Early 2015: After a benchmarking exercise with the Russell Group, SEMG set a standard aimed at achieving greater efficiency in space utilisation across teaching spaces within the University. The stated target aims to achieve 70% “frequency of use” across general teaching spaces (with a target of 72% being the sector average). In pursuit of this target, the Timetabling Unit (TTU) conducted a number of iterative scheduling and modelling exercises to ensure targets could be met across the three main teaching zones: Central, King’s Buildings and Holyrood. This led the identification of a number of spaces for decommissioning in both the King’s Buildings (5 rooms) and Holyrood (15 rooms) zones. This resulted in 5 teaching rooms in the Kings Buildings and 15 teaching rooms at Holyrood being “mothballed”/decommissioned for eventual repurpose for other activities. [1]

Early 2015: Estates set out a large upgrade programme for teaching spaces, focusing especially on the central area. 41 rooms were decommissioned for refurbishment.

Early 2015: Overall student number increased from 33,110 in 2013/14 to 35,258 in 2014/15.

Early 2015: planning at a School level: Some schools planned on scheduling more teaching activities than in previous years. In some cases, this was in response to a number of the objectives in the evolving university teaching strategy: breaking up larger classes; scheduling in more seminars and honour electives; and putting caps on some class sizes – especially honours electives to achieve an increase in quality and student experience (with caps of 20 students).

End-May 2015: School deadline for confirming Time Table requirements.

June-July 2015: Iterative modelling and scheduling exercises by the Time Tabling Unit (TTU) confirmed a larger than normal number of unbooked teaching activities. The TTU moved to schedule all activities through agreements with the affected Schools, looking at alternative dates and times for classes. Some Schools agreed to move classes to Holyrood. Initially, however, some Schools were not flexible.

Early-July 2015: confirmation to TT Operations Group (timetabling representatives from Schools) of plans to retire surplus teaching space in KB and Holyrood.

End-July 2015: The level of unbooked teaching activities held by the TTU was still large. By the end of July they still had 1,200 unbooked teaching activities, when they typically had about 150 unbooked activities at that time of year. The TTU worked with course secretaries and others in the Schools to resolve the bookings. The TTU sent a communication to all Schools confirming allocations and the need to work flexibly and collaboratively to ensure full allocation of outstanding activities. The TTU escalated the issue in many Schools to the School DoPS. A number of the mothballed/decommissioned teaching rooms at Holyrood were reintroduced.

End-Aug 2015: There were still around 800 unbooked teaching activities. The TTU informed Gavin Douglas of the situation and risk. The issue was raised at College level to CSE and CHSS senior managers. A request was made by the TTU to CSE (at College level) to confirm a suggested list of Kings Buildings rooms for re-introduction, to alleviate the issue.

Early-Sep 2015: A direct complaint from CSE was escalated to the Principal calling for the re-introduction of decommissioned teaching spaces within the Kings Buildings and the suspension of the 70% frequency of use target for the year. Four of the five provisionally decommissioned rooms were made available and this resolved the outstanding issues at this campus.

First week September 2015: Gavin Douglas called for additional emergency space to be freed in the central area. 13 staff meetings rooms in the Main Library, George Square, Buccleuch and Chrystal MacMillan were quickly repurposed for teaching. As a critical priority, ISG and Estates teams were reassigned to make these changes.

September Start of Semester: Almost all the teaching activities within the central area were accommodated.

Impacts

21. Student Experience: Inappropriate rooms being used for a teaching activity:There were over a dozen student complaints and a number of classes were severely affected:

The resulting impacts were:

  1. Several of the temporary rooms were not equipped with AV or had inappropriate AV.
  2. Several rooms were inadequate for the number of students. A number of students had to either stand or sit on the floor for 2 hours.
  3. Some rooms brought into emergency service (or recommissioned at the last moment) were of substandard quality.
  4. Significant construction noise in the Holyrood area disrupted central area classes that had been relocated there.
  5. There are no storage facilities at Holyrood (Paterson’s Land and St Leonard’s Land) and where this was required for specific training materials Schools had to arrange their own filing cabinets and facilities.

22School costs to deal with complaints: In some instances, resolving complaints resulted in Schools offering additional classes or other compensation at their expense.

23.Student Experience: Central area classes booked at Holyrood, or other more remote locations, to a level that begins to circumvent recognised travel-time constraints. There were a large number of central areas classes that had to be booked into free space at Holyrood. In some cases this led to individual student or lectures timetables with insufficient time for moving from classes in George Square that were immediately followed with a class in Holyrood. Students (or in some cases lecturers) arrived late, resulting in a degraded experience for all. Schools received compensation claims from students for unexpected travel.

24.Student Experience: No notification of late changes to rooms. In the central area about 8% of teaching activities remained unbooked up until the final weeks before start of Semester, other activities had their rooms changed at the last moment. The Timetabling software only showed the students a blank next to the classroom location, with no additional information. Some students showed up to the wrong classroom. In some cases the subject area was not notified of the change. (Three subject areas had organised welcome weeks with students and were un-booked, so catering showed up in wrong place). Often Welcome week is used in many Schools to orient the students, including showing them where their first Semester classes will be. With some classes still showing as “TBC” in the timetable, this orientation was not possible.