University of Portsmouth: Accommodating a Growing Student Body

The University of Portsmouth in Portsmouth, UK consists of 82 buildings spread over three campuses. Founded in 1869 as the Portsmouth and Gosport School of Science and Art, the school grew steadily and underwent several name changes before its inauguration as the University of Portsmouth in 1992. The University's Estates Department is responsible for providing students, faculty, and staff with a safe, clean, and well-maintained environment. Thanks to effective space and maintenance management techniques, the University has been able to actually reduce the amount of space it needs, despite continued student growth.

Reducing Manual Labor
Up until a few years ago, the University was tending to most of its space and maintenance management tasks manually. Most of the maintenance system was based on spreadsheets or paper records. Submitting reports to government agencies, such as the Higher Education Funding Council, was a time-consuming task, and fielding requests from University management only added to the burden. "There was no dynamic system we could rely upon to provide accurate space data for statutory returns," says Morley Stewart-Jones, Information Systems Manager at University of Portsmouth. Furthermore, trying to manage space occupation and availability at the University-especially in the face of steadily increasing student enrollment figures-was posing a challenge. In its search for a solution, the University was attracted by the direct links between ARCHIBUS and AutoCAD® plans, which could ease space reporting requirements. The fact that ARCHIBUS could easily integrate with Maximo®, the operational system that the University was using to track its maintenance, clinched the deal.

Creating the Link
"ARCHIBUS is interfaced with Maximo to provide a total Estate Management solution," says Stewart-Jones. Maximo handles operations issues at the University including Help Desk, work orders, preventive maintenance, and timesheets. Meanwhile, ARCHIBUS handles space management, links to drawings, property records, and condition surveys. "The main benefit of this interface is that location data does not have to be entered separately into each system," says Stewart-Jones. "ARCHIBUS is the primary source of all space data and drawings-the interface is used to mirror common data in Maximo, guaranteeing synchronization at all times." Any time a change is made to location details, this generates an output record. Fields within the ARCHIBUS tables that are relevant to Maximo (such as Site, Building, Floor, Division, Department, etc.) contain triggers, which in turn generate an interface record in a Maximo table. When required, an update is run to apply these changes to the Maximo records. A summary report can be produced for audit purposes showing new, amended, and decommissioned records, and a "processed" flag appears to prevent duplicated updates. University users can query the interface table at any time via an SQL report. "Some of our Maximo users also use ARCHIBUS, as it is the most efficient way to view space-related data in isolation," says Stewart-Jones. The applications are supported by two administrators who each have expert knowledge of one system and reasonable knowledge of the other, allowing flexible support at all times.

The University has also developed a Long-Term Maintenance Plan (LTMP) that provides a list of future maintenance projects, which are addressed on a priority basis. A customized Building Condition Appraisal application allows users to prioritize items using standard reports, rather than having to page through extensive lists. "The module also allows us to group activities by location or work category and to view budget requirements, by year, by priority, so management decisions are fully informed," says Stewart-Jones.

Rationalizing Space Usage
In addition to its role in the building maintenance arena, ARCHIBUS is also used to develop internal space charging, which helps the University rationalize its use of space. Reports such as divisional space occupation analysis and space charging statistics facilitate such chargebacks. Ad hoc reports are also generated upon request from University management. "We now enjoy easy identification of free space, and have better control of management costs," says Stewart-Jones. "Space charging has resulted in space savings of approximately 7.6% over the last three years, despite continued growth in student numbers."

This space efficiency also helps the University better regulate maintenance demand, including the 950 to 1800 work orders and requests it processes each month. "In traditional circumstances, more students would have meant more buildings and correspondingly higher maintenance demand," says Stewart-Jones. "Our space savings have allowed us to peg demand in spite of our increased student numbers." Submitting reports to the Council for funding is also quicker and easier now, according to Stewart-Jones. "Reports which previously took up to two weeks to produce, such as the Funding Council returns, can now be produced in a few minutes."

Broadening the Scope
Based on the success of these projects, the University is now planning to extend ARCHIBUS to other departments. "Access to ARCHIBUS will soon be extended to key users in our academic departments so they can view their space occupation and usage and verify their own space charging costs," says Stewart-Jones. In addition, ARCHIBUS will soon support other departments via the Web. It's all part of the University's plan to maintain a quality learning environment as efficiently as possible.