Estate Services Update, April 2021 - Facilities Directorate

Capital Development

Earlier this month, colleagues who worked on the Sir William Henry Bragg building celebrated the completion of its construction. Following on from this key milestone, the next steps in the coming months are to migrate research equipment (new and existing) into the building and recalibrate with service connections as necessary. Full furniture fit out will also take place with IT/AV installations making the building ready for teaching in the autumn.

The Esther Simpson building is still on course to be completed at the end of August and the first phase of the landscaping and highways work associated with the project begins in April.

The Faculty of Biological Sciences refurbishment will complete in April and subsequently the roof of the Garstang building will have a comprehensive recover. The work will continue until June.

A project looking at the proposed development of Bodington Playing Fields and changing facilities will go out to tender shortly, with work scheduled to start in the summer. The scheme received part funding from the Parklife Football Hubs funding scheme.

Maintenance and Operations

Colleagues in the Maintenance and Engineering teams continue to provide support in relation to covid-19 requirements. This includes flushing buildings that are currently not in use by staff or students and monitoring and managing the effective ventilation of all buildings in line with Government covid-19 safety measures.

The Engineering team are working on several projects across the University, delivering engineering related works. The major projects they are involved in include the Sir William Henry Bragg building, Roger Stevens lecture theatres, Faculty of Biological Sciences, the Esther Simpson building, Future Fashion project and the Print and Copy Bureau.

Planon project update

Great progress is being made in relation to the Planon project. Recently the project team and key stakeholders have been involved in a number of specification sessions held with Planon colleagues. These sessions are all about understanding exactly how the team want Planon and FD processes to work together to give the best experience for staff and customers.

The sessions covered the customer portal and how they can raise jobs, helpdesk and maintenance activities, stock management, health and safety, finance, and links with SAP Key Activity. Previously the project team had linked in with subject matter experts and produced a list of over 450 job requests that customers could raise which they would want to make into “standard orders”. This would mean that these requests would follow a set path to be actioned efficiently.

It also involves asking the customer a number of set questions to make sure the right information is received to help the Maintenance team to understand the issue and deal with it appropriately.

Support Services

Estates Support Services have undertaken the International Parking Community audit across all University car parking facilities and parking processes. This will help inform planning for the coming months. The team also continue to provide a parking service for hospital staff.

The Office Support team have been supporting HR to identify and provide free desks for those staff who need to work on campus on an ad hoc basis. They have also been heavily involved with the developing a way for desks to be directly booked by staff when they need to come on to campus. This system will run through Planon and will make the process faster and more robust. Full testing will be happening in the coming weeks.

Colleagues on Estates Helpdesk are now beginning to see an increase in activity as lockdown eases and the slow but gradual return of staff and students to campus. A large proportion of their time recently has been spent focusing on the Planon project for Estates Maintenance and are looking at understanding exactly how the rollout of Planon can give the best experience for staff and customers.