News

Bond Bryan Associate Director, Roger Newman, will be speaking at this year’s Education Estates Conference on 1st–2nd November 2017.

The presentation – “Delivering Efficiency Across Estates and Facilities” – looks at one of Bond Bryan’s projects: Bradford College.

The Further Education sector is set for a major transformation over the coming years as a result of the area reviews announced by the Skills Minister in 2015. The Government expects the area reviews to “enable a transition towards fewer, larger, more resilient and efficient providers”.
With a focus on student experience and world class facilities, Bradford College has seen a significant transformation to its assets over recent years, having commenced implementation of the recommendations of a strategic review of their estate, which identified a need to rationalise and replace their buildings. This case study sets a benchmark for what success looks like in a more efficient estate.
The first phase was Trinity Green, a vocational building completed in 2008 (8,100m²), followed by ‘The David Hockney Building’ in 2015 (23,500m²); combined, these assets have replaced a significant proportion of the College’s estate, consolidating not only the number of buildings from which it operates, but also considerably reducing the total floor area that it occupies. Central to this strategy was embracing new teaching practices around flexible learning and delivery, and a substantial investment in information technology and infrastructure, both of which drove significant efficiencies in space utilisation.
In addition to driving efficiency in built assets, the College has progressed with an in-depth review of how facilities management is implemented across their estate; this has resulted in a leaner in-house structure, use of external providers where appropriate and ultimately significant cost savings in terms of reduced in running costs.
Why does this matter?
Many FE colleges struggle to maintain and operate ageing estates, and even when estates rationalisation is undertaken, the facilities management aspect is often overlooked. Bradford College is a prime example of where both of these processes have been undertaken successfully and tangible outcomes have been realised.

Director, Stewart Binns and Associate Director, Rimko Roelvink from Turner and Townsend, will also be joining the discussion at 12:05 –12:20pm on Day 1 of the conference on the on 1st November (C&U 2017).