‘‘ T
uesday 18 February 2020 marked the one year anniversary of the opening of UCL’s Student Centre. This
article reflects on our experience of operating UCL’s flagship building over the past year and considers lessons learned. The Student Centre is open 24 hours per day, seven days a week and all year round, its study spaces have been extremely busy. Average daytime occupancy between 9am and 9pm has been 63 per cent, rising to 78 per cent for April 2019. Overnight occupancy figures averaged 17 per cent, rising to 30 per cent for April 2019. During our 12-day Christmas closure average occupancy was 37 per cent. Following the continued high usage of the Student Centre we made the decision to increase the number of study spaces, and have been a able to add 100 extra spaces in our Social Study bringing the total to 1,104. The Student Centre provides a range of learning environments – 216 of our study spaces are designated as Quiet Study and these have proved to be extremely popular. Longer-term we may convert the 86 Social Study spaces on our top floor to Quiet Study to satisfy demand.
Events, visits and awards The ground floor of the Student Centre is open to the public from 7am to 7pm each day and this has opened up a new way of accessing our Bloomsbury Campus from the east side. This open space is regularly used for exhibitions and stalls ranging from Student Union Music and Dance Society Performances to Career Jobshops, Mental Health Fairs and evening events for UCL Alumni. Events are restricted in terms of the numbers taking place each day and they are permitted as long as they meet the criteria specified in our Events Policy. To date, nearly 200 events have taken place in the Student Centre!
March 2020
The building’s high-quality design has enabled it to become a flagship for sustainability at UCL and helped to reduce running costs.
The Student Centre has generated much interest from around the world. We have hosted over 100 groups including 60 from UK Higher Education Institutions as well as groups from Norway, Ireland, the United States, Hungary, Ukraine, South Africa and India. Of particular interest has been the successful mix of study spaces, the Student Enquiry Centre (incorporating Student Wellbeing) on Level 1, the terrace on Level 4, the Prayer and Mediation Rooms (incorporating ablution facilities) in the basement and facilities such as laptop loans, smart lockers and showers.
The building’s high-quality design has enabled it to become a flagship for sustainability at UCL and helped to reduce running costs. A ground source heat pump system linked to deep boreholes provides “free” summer cooling and also supports heating during the winter. Photovoltaics on the roof provide clean, renewable energy and windows automatically open to naturally ventilate the building during the spring and autumn. We are extremely proud of the 10 awards that the Student Centre received during 2019. This included a BREEAM Outstanding rating reflecting exceptional environmental, social and economic sustainability performance as well as being the Overall Winner and Education Building of the Year Winner at the 2019 Schueco Awards and receiving the Judges Inspiration Award from the Institute of Civil Engineering.
Challenges The Student Centre has been embraced by our students, but the heavy use of the building has presented us with a number of challenges. The building has three lifts which is not always sufficient to cater for demand during times of peak usage. Likewise, the 36 toilets cannot always cope with demand and queues can develop. As the building is continually open
Peter Dennison (
p.dennison@
ucl.ac.uk) is Head of Customer Service at UCL Library Services, University College London.
carpets and other soft furnishings are already showing signs of wear and our cleaners can struggle to keep up with the spot cleaning required for spillages, and so we have agreed to increase the number of cleaning staff during the day.
When the building opened we had one security guard, but it soon became evident that this was not enough so we paid for an additional guard to work during the day to patrol the building. We are still dealing with a few snagging issues which can take time to resolve due to the specialist nature of some environmental control systems within the building. Despite the challenges that we have faced, feedback from our students has been overwhelmingly positive. Their suggestions have enabled us to enhance and develop the services that we offer and improve the overall study environment within the building. We have worked collaboratively with colleagues in other departments such as Student and Registry Services and IT Services to ensure that colleagues are cross-trained as much as possible to provide an excellent user-experience at the point of need. We will be using the lessons learned from our experience of managing and operating the Student Centre to inform service provision at our new campus – UCL East – which will be opening at the Olympic Park in Stratford in 2022. IP
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 35
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