Readying university estates for the next generation

University estates are under pressure. Budgets are tight. Campuses are ageing. Student expectations are rising. 

In this episode of Stantec's SCOPE podcast, Trevor Payne, Director of Estates at the University of Oxford, and Bryan Murray from Stantec explore how universities can future-ready their estates. 

From smarter use of space and real time data, to adaptable design, sustainability and climate resilience, they discuss practical ways estates teams can deliver better outcomes — now and for the long term.

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2.86 million students were the UK higher education institution. In the academic year 2024 to 25 students. Expectations for their university experience are high, but due to inflationary costs of construction, energy and maintenance, estate spend is squeezed. Capital expenditure is £1 billion below pre-COVID levels. The challenges of stewarding historic assets, creating spaces that attract and inspire students and modernising for mid 21st century learning means university estates must adapt at a faster pace than ever. Shining a light on how to tackle these challenges. I'm joined by Trevor Payne, director of estates at the University of Oxford and Brian Murray, director in Stantec Buildings business. I'm Graham Mundy. Welcome to The Scope, a podcast from Stantec, a global leader in sustainable engineering, architecture and environmental consulting. I've set out a tough backdrop there, and the three of us agreed in advance we were going to be solutions focus for this podcast. But let's just put on the table very briefly some of the challenges and dynamics. The UK's higher education sector is facing. And then we can explore on some of those themes. So Trevor, thank you for joining us from the University of Oxford. Give us your perspective on some of those challenges. Thank you. Delighted to be here. Yeah. I think we have to be solutions focussed because there are so many challenges. I think we could end up in a doom spiral, and that's not what this is about. I think some of the challenges the immediate challenges are, we need to be more efficient. So we need to make sure all the estates that we look after are squeezing every bit of value out of every pound that we spend. You'll know from looking at the press and watching the TV that, the sector's challenged at the moment in terms of income and international students. There are all sorts of challenge around the estate and investments in the estate. So there's lots to keep us busy. And the economic impact? Well, from a university perspective, often the university is the largest employer in the location that they are. I mean, if you take Oxford, we're the largest employer in the county. We bring billions in to the UK economy. We add to tourism, and that's jobs and money. And actually, when students come, often they stay. So there's that sort of sticky factor as well in terms of we attract people. Plus we spend a lot in the local economy. So we spend with local providers, local supply chains. So we're actually a big deal to the local economy. Yeah. So this is of their very important outlay to the local local economy. Brian, if I can come to yourself in an observation from you as well, what are some of the themes and the challenges we we as a business at Stantec, we'll see a lot of students come, you know, graduates come through from university, obviously. Absolutely. And we're seeing it, firsthand, really, from the students who are just graduating or recently graduated, and they're explaining their life on the campus. The level of quality of graduates that we're coming through, I have to say, is impeccably high as the highest I think I've ever seen it for a long, long time. And whether that's graduates now demanding more from the campus, whether they're demanding more from universities, whether it's the teaching, whether it's the the social aspect, whether it's the, the whole mental health side of things as well. They're the company that's becoming more and more prevalent in everything that the they do. So I think that there's two sides of that. Yes, that the the graduates are an amazing quality coming through, but they are demanding a lot more from the university. And obviously that's putting a lot on facilities such as yours to have any way to deliver really. And that and they're voicing, that their opinion in ways that we've never been able to do before, obviously through social media and things like that. Okay. So thank you for that. Is getting some of the key points on the table to start with. So a lot is asked of our university estates. You've touched on that already Trevor. And I've touched on the in the intro there's a squeeze on expenditure. So efficiency in how you use the estate is critical. Trevor, how are you responding to that? In an answer from the perspective of Oxford University and then more broadly in terms of estate directors across the UK for for universities, how they responding to this. So the key thing is to understand how the estates utilised. First of all, think about the space that you've got. Think about how a space is occupied. Think about the downtime, think about the uptime and make sure you are only cleaning buildings that are used. Make sure you're only maintaining assets that have been used and when they need to. In particular, rent runtimes. Understand the condition of your estate as well. So I think it's all about data data driven decisions and evidence driven decisions. That's the key thing at the moment to try and drive efficiency and technology has changed the estate as well. I mean, there's technology to use to understand how this data is physically used, but what you're providing the academic teaching space is, is changing, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, a big a big thing happened during Covid, obviously, we flipped to from in the classroom to out of the classroom. Now, of course, we're back on campus now. We're face to face. But we learnt a lot. We learned that we could actually do some of those big, brave things that we thought were just too difficult to do. And if you recall, we flipped a zoom in teams and we we taught in different ways. We we carried out exams in different ways. And some of that worked, worked really well. Some of it wasn't so good. And that's part of the reason that students want to be back face to face on campus. But we learnt from that. And I think what that's done is made us think about how we teach, how we share information, how students consume information as well. That also plays into the technology in the learning spaces. So we now have to be technology enabled to cover all of those bases and mix of in the room, out of the room, so everyone feels that they've got an equitable student experience. You're not disadvantaged if you're dialling in from a from a remote location. And Brian, before I come to you, actually, I'm just going to pick out one other thing that Trevor as well. In terms of when there's an opportunity to do something with the estate, there are very clear windows of time on their there are and they're getting, smaller, smaller and smaller and shorter and shorter. So it used to be summer was the time we could get in and do the work on the teaching spaces while the students were away. Of course, now, because of the efficiency and driving income, we have summer schools, so we try and use all that accommodation, use all that teaching space. So it's really important to make sure that we think about the work that's going to be carried out, programme it really, really tightly and make sure that we work with our construction partners and our architect partners in a way that actually maximises the small amount of space that we've got at time, that we've got to deliver these things. And Bryony, are you seeing that as well in terms of modern methods of construction in particular in the way that we're designing? I think it's a as Trevor saying, it's a holistic approach. It's not just this linear process that we go through starting at deciding what needs to be done on the campus, then going through a design process and then building it. It's a lot more involved in that. As you say, it's understanding what the teaching space is around that, the use of the campus, how the campus is used, what are the constraints, how are we going to work around those? And that was always something that was probably more geared towards the contractor. Whereas I think now we're learning more about the buildings, how they can be adapted, and how do you still need to maintain that live campus throughout the whole process. So it's a lot more of an integrated, stakeholder engagement driven process that enables us as designers to sort of get on there early, engage with the with the estates team, and really to be able to facilitate that, that ideal scenario at the end of the day and not just leave it up to the to the contractor towards the end of the process. And more and more, we're working with framework contractors because we want to work with a small number of contractors and advisors who understand the constraints of campus, who get us and get on with it. And I think those partnerships work really well when you've got tight windows of of opportunity. Yes. And, Brian, if I may come back to you as well, just to potentially expand a bit with some examples from, from projects that you've worked on, which, you know, some are on the Oxford campus itself and some are on, you know, smaller, newer university campuses as well. What's your experience in terms of how they're embracing using spaces differently and efficiently and the kinds of projects that that you work on? As Trevor was saying, the the way young people are taught it at universities. And it's not just young people I should have anyway. It's not just that straight out of A-levels. It's now across the wider spectrum, higher, through older age engagement or through mature students. They're obviously by playing a bigger part as well. So yes, there is, there is always that bit that we have to take into account of how the process is going to be and how the how we're going to enable the process around the campus. And we've done that on a couple of schemes. If you take the Oxford University campus, we had the, the most recent new college, which was the Rubens College, the 39th, I think, on the campus, first one for 30 years. It was an adapting an old building from the early 20th century into the new state of the art Levens campus. There was a lot of challenges that we faced on that one leaky basements, historic buildings, asbestos, liquid mercury, just about anything that you could throw at an old historic building. That one presented it to us. So yes, it was a tight constraints. We had an active campus. We had a museum next to it, but we worked around it. The contract was amazing. They did a great job on it, but again, it was just through regular communication with the design team, the estates and the contractor. The facilitated all of that. Similarly, we've just been involved in the redevelopment of the Penryn campus at Kingston University and the teaching spaces there are creating a lot more flexible use for the students, and they're also creating these spaces where future employers can come in and they can interact with the students as well. So it's it's creating this transparency of campuses as well. It's not just for the students anymore. It's for the what is straight from things for the wider community and also getting that engagement through future skills hubs actually into the campus as well. For the future. Employers can come and engage with these students. And I think that's a really important point. Now to your earlier question about efficiency. Universities are now starting to think about how campus is used. So they're sort of trying to test, do I move away from the traditional teaching periods, traditional teaching days. So they've got costs sunk in an estate. Let's use it efficiently. Let's open it up to the community. Let's think about lifelong learning, continued professional development. How do we engage the community and bring them in so that they can see and be part of the active university community? I think the sound that's a really fascinating aspect of how universities have changed. And as you've said, the teaching space has changed over time as well, isn't it? And I had some until recently about the fact this the importance of creating space that almost mirrors the work space as well for a for many courses, particularly the more science, science, engineering led courses. And I don't know how that impacts projects you've worked on as well in terms of space. Well, a couple of examples for me. First, an example in Birmingham. So, one of the buildings that were was built when I was, in Birmingham actually mirrors a trading floor. So you get the look and feel of a trading floor with all the technology, probably not all the pressure and shouting that you'd get in a in a live environment, but also some of our, business school areas are geared up, like you, you know, in the way you would find if you got a job and went into those high end companies. And I think it prepares students for the world of work and the place of work in a way that perhaps we didn't used to do before. Absolutely. And and simply following on from that, project, for UCL, UCL, Pearl, it was a very bespoke building, but it's fascinating when it comes to engagement with students or the wider environments, because the building actually itself, you could facilitate modelling, whether it's a railway station, whether it's a classroom, whether it's a an airport lounge, something like that, you could model how people would interact in that space and use that as definitive metrics as to how that would help design buildings as well. And being UCL's first, I think, Net Zero carbon project as well. We're majorly proud of that one. And the other thing to consider at the moment is we're using technology in a way to flip the space and use it more efficiently. So, we've got simulation space, so it could well be that a building is represented to represent a ward in the morning. So we we're teaching nursing students or doctors in the afternoon. We flip it and we're teaching pharmacists the room and the space is the same. It's just the virtual reality. And the technology means that we can use that space in a different way. And in doing that, though, I think we need to create different skills for technicians to support those live environments and also support the academics, because it's more presentational than perhaps it has been before, trying to manage the technology and the room and the students. So, you know, these are all things to consider about how we teach and educate in a different way. I mean, listening to you both are what strikes me, as well as what a fascinating, sector and area to get involved with, whether it's the states or whether it's, engineering design at these facilities, I mean, brand and whether you want to comment on that, I mean, for people coming into our sector. Wow. I think if you want to join the engineering team or any part of the Stantec and you're actually involved in H.R. There will never be two days the same, the the building stock across the sector is incredibly vast and it's incredibly varied. Everything from if you take obviously Oxford or Cambridge, you've got buildings that are hundreds of years old, right through to high end teaching laboratories that were created for very bespoke purposes, and picking up on Oxford, 7 or 800 year old buildings right next to things like the Beecroft Building or the biochem, which are incredibly, focussed on their individual disciplines. I mean, Beecroft was as deep in the ground as it is above ground poses some immense engineering challenges. But you wouldn't recognise that looking at it. But obviously what's gone on to get to that point, to create these facilities is, is pretty amazing. So complex buildings and fantastic opportunity. Really interesting. And I've, I've been inside the UCL Poe building as well. And it is an absolutely extraordinary space. Yeah it's pretty special. It it's very, very impressive in terms of the soundproofing and therefore the environment that it creates for you to test different environments and how they will feel and sound. It's extraordinary. And it comes back to that flexibility, being able to test a number of different scenarios. And I think that's what we're picking up on is the flexibility of these spaces. It's it's across the board. It's not just for teaching spaces, it's for laboratory and research spaces as well. To be able to build that flexibility and it's absolutely fundamental to ensure the longevity of some of these buildings across the sector. So I'm going to bring us back almost, you know, the kind of space we always imagined in our heads, actually, funnily enough, and get us on to, the value of real time data and digital tools to actually understand how a campus is being used and how colleges and buildings are being used. And, Trevor, this, I think is something that, you know, you're very familiar with. Maybe you could talk to us about how we're embracing technology, you know, and smart campuses, if you like. You know, so I've been pushing on this smart campus journey for nearly ten years now and basically is trying to understand in real time how the estate is being used. I mean, if we think about how we measure efficiency and effectiveness at the moment, we timetable the space. But if you check timetables against what happens in reality. So if you put smart, real time sensors in, you'll come up with quite a difference quite quickly. So people will timetable space for the wrong size of cohort. No timetable at the beginning of term. And then things happen and student numbers dwindle between the start of term and Christmas and then the other side of Christmas. So what's timetabled quite quickly doesn't resemble what's required. That blocks other people using the space. So you come up with a sort of bed blocking approach. So real time information is really important to test how space is being used, how space could be used. And in fact, I saw a demonstration last week that blew my mind where you could talking to an AI model and the AI would come back and give you examples about how you could reschedule the timetable, which rooms you could move students to, and what maintenance would be saved. As a result. So I think we talk about smart, actually. I think it's a step ahead. It's it's really speeding up. And as the designer and the engineer, Brian, how does the data help us to explore how space is used? I think the information that we obtain is critical because we're going from an assumption or a perceived use of space to actually using metrics and data to determine how that space is used. So we're putting science behind the decisions. So whether that's we have a system where you can where it's taking real time measurements of air quality. But obviously we're monitoring lighting quality monitoring, air quality monitoring, noise. All of these aspects go together to help facilitate and determine why spaces are actively used, why some are not being used. And then we can come together as a, as a, as a holistic team and determine what best parts of the campus can be developed and which ones need to be. Yeah. And that's a really important point when we talk about student experience and preferences, because some students want to be taught or to learn in a quieter or a noisier space, a darker, lighter, warmer, colder space. So if we can use sensors to direct students to where those spaces are, we start to use the campus in a more effective way. But we also make sure we drive the right student experience that we want as well. And that, yes, and that student experience, which you touched on the beginning is is incredibly important, isn't it, for people to feel comfortable about where they are. And I'm guessing also the use of space as well, bringing people together in some ways, cafe like, spaces as well. We haven't touched on accommodation either in this conversation so far. Where does where does accommodation come into play? Accommodation is a is a hot topic across the sector because there are some universities that don't have enough and there are some really quite, big headlines associated with how students are being accommodated. And it takes a while to plan out of that because you can't switch on that additional capacity overnight. It takes a while to put that into place. It's really important to have the right student accommodation. So some of that is provided on campus by the university. Some of it's provided by a third party. It's really important that you don't end up with a two tier system. So if you end up in a hotel that's managed by third party, you get a different experience. It's a really important part of student life. To your other point around spaces, we all now, as part of the ongoing design and iterative conversations, we have, we're exploring how students want to be consumed learning. And it could well be that they want to be in clusters. They want a Starbucks style coffee and Wi-Fi. Sit there and get on with it. Others want to have group spaces, bookable spaces. So we need to provide all of those things, and we need to have the real time information to work out, okay. Which ones are working? Which ones do we need more of? And you know, how was the house base been used over the working day? Let's cover one other big subject area before we kind of get to a wrap up in this particular podcast. Let's talk about sustainability. And let's talk about, future proofing the estate as well in terms of climatic impacts. Let me just read you this briefly. A sustainability skill survey in 20 2425 for students show that around half of the students say how seriously a university takes environmental issues will influence where they apply, and 70% say the sustainability makes them proud of their institution. So that links to that sense of identity and belonging. How is the sector embracing sustainability and also appreciating the importance of adapting to climate change, protecting the buildings as much as anything from long term impacts? Trevor, from your perspective, both with the University of Oxford and also your awareness further afield from that as well? Yeah. So firstly, I'll tell you that the students come to university with a set of things they expect to have. Sustainability is high on the list of things that they want to have some assurance about. They want to be linked to a university that is investing wisely, that is taking this sustainability journey that seriously. And if you look at Oxford, we've got a lot of older buildings and we're going to have to adapt those buildings and change them. And I think we've said before in other conversations, I think the investment around university is probably not going to be so much a new building in the future. It's going to be revamping, upgrading existing buildings. Probably most of the buildings that we'll have in 2050, the buildings we've already got. So we're going to have to change them. We're going to have to think about how we adapt them. We're going to have to think about, climate. We're going to have to think about how we can use planting to help that. So the shading, all of those things. So it's an active thing that's been considered across the sector at the moment. And on top of that, there's the whole journey to net zero carbon, which is going to be hugely expensive, hugely disruptive and a challenge whilst we deliver business as usual. Brian, some perception from yourself. I mean, I know the Stantec we've we've done studies for universities in terms of their assets. We have. And I think I'd pick up on two of Trevor's points. One is the the fact that the students and the pupils are more conscious than ever with regards to sustainability than environmental issues, and that's coming through from university and also to when we get to interview them for the first instance, probably their first job out of university. One of the key things that they're asking us is that they're grilling us for the goal. So our sustainability credentials, which is absolutely right. So the sustainability is is a key part of everything the student does. And then going into their first jobs anyway, once they leave. But yes, how we tackled the sustainability is again needs to be done as a, as a complete campus wide strategy. I think it's no good looking at buildings on an individual basis. We need to consider the holistic campus as a whole similar to what we've done up at Nottingham. We've done a climate change assessment, a climate study, assessments up that that was on the back of 2022. I think that was a remarkably hot summer. Some of the labs couldn't function. The lake was drying up. There was even a small fire on the campus as well. All of these red flags started to indicate that something needs to be done. So we've now taken out on board, and we've done a whole campus study of that and suggested means passive and active that the campus can bring together again, whether that's planting, whether it's missions to buildings, all of these need to be considered in and around Merritt. Trevor, I don't know whether this is something you experience as well. I know with the example for the University of Nottingham, some of the challenges they quoted were insurance, and therefore having an understanding about potential impacts. And also and Trevor's sorry, Brian's touched on that there briefly as well and almost an impact on their research studies as well, if they can't use the facility. Absolutely. And we've experienced all of those things. I mean, one of the real successes we've had is working with students and academics and using campuses, a living lab. We know we have to do these things. We know that we're gonna have to deploy new technologies in some cases, we don't know how they're going to work and how they're going to work with each other. So if we can use the students and the academics to make sure that investment is a wise investment and delivers, ultimately the goal which one to achieve, everybody wins. Everybody buys into that process. Let's, wrap up with a wrap up. Let's come to a wrap up question. Now, our audience potentially includes other university estate directors. You know, there's a vast array of different, universities and colleges across the country. For both of you, what would be the top three things that you would recommend, to that audience in terms of shifting the dial on managing estates when when funds are limited? But there is strong demand, as you both said in this podcast, some students for, you know, quite understandably, to have a great experience, from university. The three things I would propose, the design for adaptability. We've got to be flexible on our approach because as you say from Covid times, the way that we teaching, each sector is, has changed dramatically in the last six years, and it will continue to evolve. We've got. Topics that are coming through in the student curriculum that we don't even know how to deal with yet anyway. So it's inevitable that the science is moving quicker than the real than the estate scan. So adaptability is absolutely, absolutely fundamental. We need to make sure that we use data to drive the investment. It's not done on speculative guesswork. We need to use that real time smart campus data to drive the, towards the campus strategy. And I think what we need to do is we need to consider the wellbeing and the resilience of the campus as a core part of the infrastructure as much as the the drainage, the roads, the buildings, the real estate and everything else is the, the, the wellbeing and the, and the resilience need to be absolutely fundamental in every part that we do. Trevor, I have we left you any to list here? Well, I echo all of those, but, what I'd say to other research directors is some of the things that we've spoken about. So real focus on space and how spaces use spaces are currency. So treat as a currency efficiency. Understand the condition of the estate. Understand where you need to invest. Understand how are you going to plan to to deliver that work. And the other thing that I think needs real focus is workforce, because there is a lot of work to be delivered for upgrade work on sustainability. I'm not convinced that we've got all of those people coming through the system at the moment. So I think maybe a focus on automation and process and systems is required as well, which links to the smart approach. Fantastic. A really interesting deep dive on the higher education sector, which I hope for our audience has revealed. Wow, what a fascinating, industry and sector it actually is. Trevor, thank you so much for joining us, Brian. Very good to see you as well. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, please make sure you like, share, and indeed subscribe to The Scope on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can find all of our episodes on Stan Tech's website.