The Schools of Computer Science and Informatics, and Mathematics put together a project team to write a business case to co-locate the Schools. Initially we asked for funds to do a feasibility study on buildings we could move into (there weren’t any- it’s a city centre location and the University is expanding) so we looked at land suitable for a new building.
A number of sites across the Cathays campus were identified and ranked according to our criteria all based around being within a short walking distance from other key facilities for teaching and research. The site also had to be large enough for a building of c. 10,000m2 without being too tall.
Once our funding was secured a governance structure set up to manage the project and a design team was appointed. Our first meetings were about values and how we would measure the success of the project. Part of that success has been in student recruitment and industrial engagement- talking about co-locating the Schools led to a new MSc programme in Data Science and Analytics which has proved popular both with students and subsequent employers.
More about the values in a future post, as these have been, and continue to be, central to us.
I had no idea at the time at how many jobs there were in construction and design- many with names that I had to look up (cost consultant? CDM?) or with similar names that mean completely different things. As an example, we currently have at least four people called project manager, but we all have quite different roles and are actually employed by three different organisations.
Here is a diagram of our Steering Group from 2019. I think it gives a sense of how many people need to be involved in this kind of project to make it a success!
Abacws- Cardiff University 