Capital Planning
After listening to Bob Waddle’s presentation in class about capital planning I’ve learned quite a few things about the facility design and construction process. There are many challenges when it comes to designing a facility and then creating those designs into an actual facility. When you begin the process you must consider all elements such as the overall master plan, academic plans within the college, and the specific plans of each individual department. I believe it to be very difficult to please every one of these different aspects when designing a new facility on a campus. There are a lot of people who want a lot of different things in a new facility and the capital planning team has to try and please as many as they can.
Along with having to try and please all of the different areas you have to consider things like the more specific needs, budgets, hiring firms for construction and having the firms’ complete tasks within a given timeline. All of these components can become major challenges while creating a facility design and then brining that design to life. As Mr. Waddle discussed in class you have to be realistic with your facility design in retrospect to the money that you have to use. You cannot just jump into construction without thoroughly going through the specific needs of the facility and comparing these needs to what it will eventually cost. It can also be a challenge to find the firm that fits your needs, wants and matches the best with your team. Mr. Waddle discussed that if you do not consider how your team and the firm will work together you can end up with a lot of headaches and disagreements along the way.
Although there are many challenges to the design and construction process, there are rewards that come with the hard work. Being able to satisfy the needs of users who have needed the space you have provided for them can be a joyous moment. Watching your facility being used on a daily basis for productive and educational reasons is always a reward for the work that the committees and construction teams put in. Also, if the public is pleased with the new facility along with students and faculty can be a reward for the efforts put into a facility.
When comparing BGSU’s capital plan to other universities it can be a difficult task to see what BGSU can improve upon and what they excel in. Many universities are so different in many ways such as state funding, amount of students in attendance, and size of the campus. Two schools that I chose to compare BGSU’s capital plans are University of Minnesota and Ohio State University. First beginning with Minnesota the differences are subtle. The first very noticeable difference is the information provided for the public. They have an entire web page dedicated to their capital planning. This allows you to view projects that are current and ongoing, in depth information on these projects and a lot of information available for people to educate themselves about all the aspects of capital planning at the university (http://www.cppm.umn.edu/). The other main difference in the universities is that Minnesota has less projects in process than Bowling Green at the moment. Bowling Green has a lot of projects in the construction phase right now, while Minnesota has a few in route and a few soon to happen in the near future.
The other university that I chose is Ohio State. This university is significantly larger than Bowling Green so there are some obvious differences in capital planning that will occur. One of the largest differences in their plans compared to ours is money. Ohio State will have a significantly larger budget than Bowling Green due to the fact that they are a larger university. As of 2009 OSU’s, “facility projects total more than $2.5 billion for the next six years (FY 2011-FY2016), or more than $400 million annually,” (http://www.rpia.ohio-state.edu/committees/senfiscal/docs/09-22-09/BOT%20Capital%20Recommendations.pdf). These numbers exceed Bowling Green’s spending by quite a bit and shows how the different sizes in schools can really affect the funds granted for projects on their campus’.