Latest Reports

Envision a highly adaptable, flexible, and sustainable research building, with maximized lab square footage and a thriving, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary environment. Arizona State University attained this vision of a workhorse facility through a first-time building delivery partnership. Both the vision and its realization focus on answering one question: How much research space can we get? “Through the lens of a ‘space manager,’ I’m always trying to get the highest and best use of space out of the university’s available square footage,” explains Erik Halle, senior director of Research Facilities and Infrastructure at Arizona State. “With Biodesign C, we wanted to see how far we could push that.”

If you haven’t been to a library lately, get ready for a surprise. Today’s academic libraries are not just places to get information, but to create it. To help their users succeed, institutions are transforming libraries by bringing together people, spaces, technology, and programs across a full spectrum of thought.

Science programs face the same pressures everywhere—a need for tech-enabled classrooms, demand for doing more with less space, emphasis on flexible research space, and practical considerations pushing departments to share resources and work together. At tiny Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, a new science building is meeting these challenges by physically connecting departments and expanding non-program spaces.

An untold number of construction projects have put on hold as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean all work has to stop. In fact, owners should focus on preparing those projects to resume the moment it is safe to return to the job site. “The best thing for an owner to do is get these projects shovel-ready so they will be in the driver’s seat,” says James Vermeulen, managing principal of Vermeulens. “Whether the project can start construction or is delayed, it is important to be in the driver’s seat. If there’s a schedule slip, you can have an even better set of 100 percent construction-ready documents.”

As Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) experiences exponential growth of its online programs, it continues to invest in its physical campus, most notably in a new college of engineering. While the university is not looking to increase its on-campus enrollment, it is expanding its offerings on its Manchester, N.H., campus, with new facilities, an academic quad, two new residence halls, and a large greenspace. The centerpiece of this investment is the $45 million, 68,000-sf College of Engineering, Technology and Aeronautics (CETA), the first new academic building added to the Manchester campus in over a decade. The CETA building, which opened in January, is SNHU’s first new facility devoted to engineering technologies, and will help expand access to STEM education in the New England region.