Planning - The Educational Program

Continuing in our discussion on effective planning, it is essential to have a written Educational Program that describes your needs as the owner to the design professionals. In some States, Texas for example, it is a requirement by the Texas Education Agency to have an Educational Program for each new facility and any major space renovations.

The Educational Program (E.P.) is more than just listing the type and sizes of instructional spaces for the proposed facility. Although this list is needed, much more information should be shared with your architect. The E.P. should describe the philosophy of teaching for the district, outlining the specific learning style that is to be accommodated. The document should also outline the spatial relationships of the instructional rooms; which learning environments should be adjacent to each other or located some distance apart for noise or distraction avoidance.

Other items include the number of students to be served in each room, spaces for special needs students, vocational spaces, non-instructional support areas, outdoor learning areas, the estimated budget, administrative spaces, hours of operation, any public access or usage, and the safety of students and staff in the instructional areas as well as the overall safety plan for the campus.

Site issues should be addressed in the document, listing such needs as student pick-up and drop off zones. The bus drop off zone should be separated from the parent pick up areas. Playgrounds should be discussed and planned in detail to accommodate the safe movement of students from the facility to the play areas. (all playgrounds must be handicap accessible according the new Federal ADA guide lines, this takes effect March of 2012). Parking areas for students and staff should be located and areas for students to congregate before and after school should be noted.

The E.P. is a comprehensive document that should have input from all levels of staff, from the campus level to the district level including teachers, administrators, and maintenance and facility personnel.

The better your Educational Program, the better the completed facility will be. Time spent up front on this document will assure you have a school that will function now and well into the future.

Michael D. King AIA

Collaboration in Planning and Designing School Improvements

A new wave is passing over the traditional educational facilities culture.  It is perhaps new to people working in school facilities planning in the 1980s through the present, but not so new to those of us that predate the age of Disco.  Bellenger in a commentary entitled “Forging the Path” found in the January 2011 issue of Today’s Facility Manager advocates a fresh look at collaboration.

According to this article, 98% of construction dollars in the United States are spent on existing buildings, where the demand to become energy efficient takes precedent.   Hence, the standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings (USGBC) sets the stage for “going green” and using collaboration as a tool to achieve the high performance needed to decrease energy consumption.

The buzz term is “integrated design.”  What this means for school leaders (the proxy owners of schools) is that they must come to the table with design professionals, contractors, engineers, facility managers, and developers.  Finally, it is being recognized that the recent approach (I hesitate to use the term traditional approach) where the architect designs the building’s shape, orientation, and envelope, and then transmits the drawings to engineers and owners for their approval, is the silo approach that misses the rich opportunities for optimizing a building’s performance through collaboration from the beginning. 

This presents a cultural shift in the building industry to transform the design process, but, according to Lynn G. Bellenger, it has to be done if the goal of net-zero-energy buildings can be realized.  "As I have noted for many years, unsuccessful projects can be traced to failure of communication among architects, engineers, owners (educators and community stakeholders), and contractors"(After Bellenger). 

In education, too frequently, the educational community has given design for efficiency, learning, and teaching over to architects, contractors, and engineers, assuming they know more about educational learning spaces than the educators themselves.  Regardless of what happens in the design process, we should consider value engineering that includes the variable of how much the green building really influences teaching and learning.  What are the pluses and minuses of "going green" for learning and teaching?  

To ensure success for everyone, it is imperative to cultivate stronger communication skills and demand collaboration among the design team’s members as they work to enhance building performance.  Why not also include building performance, student performance, and teaching efficacy as they relate the physical environment in the larger equation for success?  Educators; however, can only work productively with the design team when they have been trained in educational facilities planning, design, and management that is based on sociophysical principles and characteristics.  It is time too reinvent this component of the university curriculum for educators. Research in the area is beginning to flourish across many universities, worldwide. Educator participation and collaboration in planning and design of places and spaces for teaching and learning can again become robust.

Collaboration with equal influence on the design team is a new challenge and opportunity for education!

Planning - Your First Priority

Life is full of 'firsts'. Your first word, your first step and your first day of school come to mind. Fast forward to today, you may have been assigned the task to facilitate in the design of a learning space at your school, or have the opportunity as an administrator to lead a design team in creating a new campus. This could be a 'first' for you and the task can seem daunting. But whether or not this is your first experience in design and planning or this is old hat to you, one thing remains constant; you must take the time to plan. As basic as this sounds, it remains a necessity.

What has created the need for your school facility? Answering this question will set the tone for later discussions when you may be addressing tax payers in your district and asking for funds. The reason for expansion or renovations of your facility most likely have not occurred overnight, unless of course there is a natural disaster of a fire or tornado. Many times the need arises out of an increase in student population. Population shifts within a district can also create needs where the facility can be impacted, either with additional students or declining enrollment. Knowing your school's demographics is a key in successful planning for the future. You must be able to assess where your student population will be in 5 and 10 years from now in order to have the proper facilities to accommodate them. Usually the forecast is updated yearly, in fast growth areas it may be updated more often, sometimes 2 or 3 times in a year.

One of your next steps is to assess the architectural feasibility of the existing facility. If you are considering whether or not to renovate a structure, one of the first questions you must ask is can the building support the current educational program needs now and in the future. Renovation of a facility would be considered a success if it has a projected life of over 25 years. Of course cost always is a consideration. A rule of thumb is that if renovation costs more than half of what new construction would be, the better solution would be to go with the new construction. This does not take into account historical aspects of the community and other factors - renovations vs new construction will be a topic for another discussion. Ask yourself, how will the building accommodate what and how we teach. The physical aspects of the facility should be assessed by professionals. Architects and engineers can tell you whether or not the building envelope (exterior walls and roof) are in good shape and can be repaired, can the electrical system handle the technology we will need, and structurally is the building sound? The answer to those and many other physical aspects of the building will help in determining whether the life of a building can be extended or not.

I have just scratched the surface of planning for educational facilities. It is my hope to impart some tips and share my 30 years of working as an architect in the educational facility design world with you. Topics in future blogs will range from hiring a design professional to what to expect during the construction of my school. I would love to hear from you about specific topics or questions that you may have related to school facilities design and construction.

Life is full of 'firsts', today is my first time to write a blog. I am excited about what is to come.

Michael King AIA