University of Edinburgh license EventMAP’s new Planner package to optimise growth plans

Every once in a while, a new client or project comes along that perfectly demonstrates the strength, and importance, of what EventMAP do. In this case, it’s the University of Edinburgh.‍

With its sprawling campus across the city, and an ambitious development masterplan stretching to 2030, it is easy to imagine just how difficult a planning task the University’s estates and timetabling managers have in front of them. The variables involved are extensive.  Finding the best way to make everything work together, cost-effectively and optimally, for students, teaching staff, and administrators is a complex process, and one that leaves no room for guesswork.

Having been in discussion with the University since last year, we can now announce that Edinburgh has licensed our new Planner package to help it map out the best path for its 10-year plan. Given the particular emphasis on teaching space and student travel time, Planner, our powerful new visualisation tool for resource planning, allows estates managers and  timetable planners to build a complete project overview, and rapidly model ‘what-if’ scenarios to develop plans for capital developments that work optimally and cost-effectively for all stakeholders. More often than not, ambitious projects like this end up settling for solutions that ‘sort of’, or, ‘mostly’, work, rather than developing what’s genuinely the best possible solution, which is exactly the outcome Planner has been designed to enable.

Planner works by combining data for a project’s parameters and constraints such as timetabling requirements, existing estate resources, and user requirements. It allows users to perform highly visual change management, storyboarding, target-driven planning and modelling, to develop an optimal strategy based on generated scenarios. Introducing unprecedented power, flexibility and transparency into the planning process, Planner allows users to develop multiple, comprehensive scenarios that answer strategic requirements in detail, accompanied by a full impact analysis, that can quickly and easily be shared with stakeholders.

Initially, the University of Edinburgh will be using Planner in the following areas:

1. Developing scenarios for timetable flexibility and space optimisation to ensure room and resource requirements are appropriate to the University’s size and shape.
2. Analysing the projected impact of the delivery of their new King’s Buildings Nucleus, and accompanying consolidation of College of Science and Engineering teaching on-campus, with aims including the reduction of student travel time and increased timetabling efficiency to improve overall satisfaction levels.
3. Investigating options for the separation of the University’s Central area into two distinct timetable zones to reduce pressures on students and staff, who currently have to make long journeys between classes within a very short period of time across a sprawling campus estate.
4. Developing models to uncover the most efficient way to reconfigure the teaching day to allow for increased time between classes.

As usual, we shall update regularly on the project’s progress. Covid-19 shall, of course, add an extra layer of complexity to the process in the short-and medium-term, but we are confident that Planner will rise to the challenge for the University.

If taking the guesswork out of infrastructure and resource planning sounds like something you need for your large organisation, please get in touch to discuss your requirements.

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