Campus management is about more than just maintaining buildings. It’s a multi-disciplinary approach to aligning facilities, technology, sustainability, and user needs across the modern university environment. From smart campus technology to sustainable campus strategies, institutions are rethinking how campuses operate.
What is a Campus Management Solution?
Campus management, sometimes called campus facility management, involves meeting the diverse needs of an educational institution's stakeholders: from students and staff to visitors and the surrounding community. These needs are distributed across physical campus features (classrooms, residences, sports centres, etc.) and digital building technologies (high-speed WiFi, security, cloud systems).
Higher education institutions are challenged with needing to integrate a multitude of departments: IT, security, real estate, maintenance, catering, grounds, and more. A campus management solution is an integrated platform that connects these digital and physical elements. It centralises various functions such as campus facilities and campus property management, space planning, and service request management, to streamline operations, ensuring that resources are utilised effectively to best support the institution's mission.
The Importance of University Facility Management
Higher education institutions have many physical facilities, all in demand at different times by different stakeholders. Higher education facility management systems help keep demands met, balanced, and responded to. Let’s explore some of the key aspects of university facilities management:
Asset and maintenance management
Campuses can span thousands of acres with a mix of modern and historic buildings, making asset tracking essential. Monitoring inventory, tracking equipment, managing maintenance schedules, and replacing ageing assets is essential for keeping operations running smoothly and educational standards high.
Space and workplace services management
With so many people needing facilities at different times, real-time visibility into space occupancy and utilisation is a critical part of campus-specific workplace management. Which classrooms, lecture halls, labs, and offices are in use, and when? University space management also encompasses aspects like floor plans and in and outdoor wayfinding systems.
Real estate management
Campus property management includes everything from student housing to administrative buildings. Managing leases, ensuring compliance, and maintaining functional infrastructure across varied property types is foundational to long-term campus viability. Contracts must be compliant with local regulations and property law. Campus facilities management also includes service-level agreements (SLAs) of academic, research, and administrative spaces.
Energy and sustainability management
Universities are increasingly prioritising sustainable campus initiatives, from energy reduction to carbon-neutral goals. Facilities teams must track waste, water, and energy use and implement technologies that enable efficient building performance.
With support from university facility management software, institutions can report accurately on progress and continue improving. For example, spatial analytics can guide decisions around sustainable transport planning and occupancy data on energy optimisation.
Navigating the Challenges of Managing Campus Facilities
Campus facilities professionals face unique challenges due to the wide range of environments they service: varied maintenance needs, operational complexity, budgetary considerations, disconnected technologies, and many different stakeholders within universities.
The way students engage is also changing. Learners today expect more online options, with flexible scheduling to accommodate a broader age range of students.
Each building on campus may be subject to different regulations, financial reporting, security standards, energy needs, and maintenance strategies. Coordinating resources across such diverse areas presents a logistical challenge.
Use across campus environments also varies over time. Students, academics, visitors, and maintenance staff constantly move between and within buildings, adding more complexity.
Use across campus environments also varies over time. Students, academics, visitors, and maintenance staff constantly move between and within buildings, adding more complexity.
Some of the most visually appealing higher education institutions are those with a rich history, which comes with ageing infrastructure. Dated facilities can present significant maintenance challenges (including plumbing, heating, ventilation) and energy inefficiencies.
Additionally, campuses are often used around the clock. Maintenance processes must be undertaken quickly, with minimal downtime or disruption. Preventive maintenance, real-time monitoring, and smart alerts help keep disruptions minimal, even in buildings that are in constant use.
Teaching, research, student services, and facilities upkeep mean universities balance many competing priorities when allocating funding. Facilities maintenance, while essential, often receives less attention, deferred until issues become critical. However, neglecting these needs can result in more significant disruptions, interrupting teaching and research activities and negatively impacting staff and students.
Financial management in higher education is challenging in itself, due to fluctuations in funding and tuition revenue. Additionally, many institutions are grappling with reductions in state funding and government grants, while simultaneously facing pressure to invest in facilities and increase faculty salaries.
Financial management in higher education is challenging in itself, due to fluctuations in funding and tuition revenue. Additionally, many institutions are grappling with reductions in state funding and government grants, while simultaneously facing pressure to invest in facilities and increase faculty salaries.
Universities are seen as centres of innovation through cutting-edge research, startup incubators, and industry collaborations. This naturally raises expectations for their physical environments to reflect the same forward-thinking approach. Meeting these expectations requires integrating data management systems.
This is where a ‘smart campus’ comes into play. Gartner, Inc. says: ‘A smart campus is a physical or digital environment in which humans and technology-enabled systems interact in increasingly open, connected, coordinated and intelligent ecosystems.’
Technologies that turn a campus into a ‘smart campus’ can include:
- IoT sensors – for real-time system connectivity, enabling responsive environments (e.g., lighting or HVAC adjusting automatically based on occupancy)
- AI (artificial intelligence) – for predictive occupancy and security monitoring
- BIM (building information modelling) for visualisation and improved decision-making in planning and construction of campus assets
- CAD – for detailed digital infrastructure records that streamline facility updates and reduce downtime on repairs
- Advanced data analytics - to forecast future campus needs
Campus stakeholders don’t exist in isolation. Effective campus management enables collaboration and engagement between and within stakeholder groups: from building users such as staff, students, and local community members, to campus faculty leadership. Communication and information sharing via clear systems for service requests, alerts, and status tracking create transparency and trust, and support overall safety.
The value of an integrated campus management approach
Universities that want to remain competitive are leveraging integrated campus management systems, helping them to predict and overcome the challenges listed above.
3 Benefits of Using a Campus Management Solution
Increased efficiency, transparency & flexibility
Integrating IoT devices for smart building management enables facility managers to make faster, better-informed decisions, especially around space allocation, maintenance cycles, building inspections, and HVAC.
All of these improvements lead to cost savings, both in resources spent and staff timetaken.
Enhanced student and staff engagement
Centralised facilities management is more connected and efficient. Upgraded systems for improved space utilisation, digital wayfinding, service requests, and device connectivity reduces friction for those using the campus.
The resulting increased student and staff satisfaction boosts constructive engagement, creating positive feedback loops.
Improved sustainability efforts & insights
Campus management software can significantly boost efforts towards a more sustainable institution or green campus. Consolidating data on energy consumption, water usage, waste generation, and other resource use enables patterns and inefficiencies to be recognised and addressed. Spatial mapping can help promote sustainable transport options and space allocation.
Solutions are able to quickly generate insights on sustainability metrics, enabling institutions to report on progress and identify new goals. Finally, integrated platforms can boost engagement in sustainability initiatives.
Making the Business Case for a Campus Management Solution
Before championing a campus management solution, we recommend creating a business case. This should include internal and external costs, and monetary and non-monetary benefits (such as a reduction in processes, property management, services, and maintenance costs; and improved student and staff satisfaction).
Did you know? Some campus buildings in the US can be vacant up to 65% of the time, representing a huge opportunity for universities to save money via more efficient space utilisation.
- Higher Education Facilities Forum Article – ‘Higher Ed Facilities: Navigating Through Disruption’
Other costs of campus management solutions to consider
In many cases, software costs are a minor part of the total investment. Data collection, change management, internal costs, IT infrastructure and project management are all necessary processes. Customisation and integration can heavily impact the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), depending on the vendor and solution.
Deployment and support stages should also be considered part of the business case. Your team should be able to answer questions around application management and deployment. Integrated campus management solutions are often deployed as a service (SaaS) to lower TCO, reduce time to launch, and improve integration and scalability.
Planon’s Campus Management Solution
At Planon, we believe in empowering institutions to operate smarter, more sustainable campuses. The Planon Campus Management Solution helps you create the best environment for people to study, live, and work. Powered by our market-leading Smart Building Management Software, we pride ourselves on hosting open platforms to utilise third-party data sources.
King’s College London, one of the oldest universities in England, used Planon to cut its maintenance backlog in half. This is a typical example of how an integrated campus management solution centralises processes, data and technologies in a platform, therefore enabling significant improvements.
Take the next step
Our ultimate goal is to help colleges and universities elevate their campus strategy by increasing efficiency, transparency, flexibility, and stakeholder satisfaction. If this aligns with your business objectives, read about our solution for campus management or contact us for more information.
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