Tradeline's industry reports are a must-read resource for those involved in facilities planning and management. Reports include management case studies, current and in-depth project profiles, and editorials on the latest facilities management issues.
Latest Reports
Putting STEM Education Front and Center with Teaching-Only Lab Buildings
Teaching-only lab buildings are so much more than simplified versions of the latest shiny new research building on campus. They serve as a hub for students, a point of pride on tours for prospective students, and an opportunity to showcase a college or university’s identity. But they do require special design considerations, especially around safety.
Barshop Institute’s New Location Energizes Research Community with Enhanced Collaboration and Productivity
The Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health in San Antonio illustrates the pivotal role location plays in enhancing the success of an internationally recognized research program. The Institute previously occupied two buildings at a research park 23 miles from the university’s main campus. University administrators wanted to collocate all research on the same campus to promote multidisciplinary collaboration and interaction, with proximity to all clinical research activities, and to promote efficiency and the shared use of resources.
Solving for ‘X’—Designing a Science Building Based on Ideas and Culture, Not Numbers and Disciplines
After a 2017 fire sped up the timeline for construction of a new science building, University of Delaware faculty and staff needed to make hard choices about how the building should be organized and what features and facilities it should include. Politically, the easiest path would have been to divide the space by department, but Peter Krawchyk, the university’s vice president of facilities and university architect, had a different idea of how to make the decision, one he argued would work better: “We didn’t begin with any kind of programming—number of principal investigators, fume hood counts, or anything like that. We began with ideas and culture.”
Enhancing Interdisciplinary Research Using Benchmarking Data
The decreasing amount of time researchers spend in their labs is changing research facility design and space allocation, with an increased need for lab support space, a more significant reliance on core facilities, the creation of additional write-up and data analysis environments, and the purposeful inclusion of collaboration spaces.
New Learning Center at the Community College of Philadelphia Redefines “Library”
The new Library and Learning Center at the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) has transformed the school’s former library from a quiet place filled primarily with stacks of books into a welcoming and dynamic environment focused on providing students access to the resources needed to succeed academically. In addition to the library, the renovated facility includes the learning lab, which brings together tutoring support previously housed in three different locations, a student academic computing center, nine group study rooms, two academic classrooms, and a One-Button studio for video production. The number of computers available for student use throughout the entire facility has increased from 30 to 300, an important advantage for the many CCP students who do not own personal computers.