Place Intelligence worked with a leading design practice to provide an evidence base to support the development of a long term capital investment and asset masterplan for a top-ranked university’s property and estate portfolio.
Challenge
Our client, one of the world’s top ranked universities, wanted to develop a series of evidence-based performance metrics to help guide the long-term masterplanning of its campuses and estate.
Our client’s estate comprises a property portfolio of more than 400 university-owned buildings. The university needed high-quality place and performance data as it worked through a $2.6-billion capital works program and 30-year strategy for its estate.
Engagement
Place Intelligence was engaged to develop a series of location-based performance metrics to quantify design impact, place demand and provide our client with the necessary baselines to measure change over time.
Our team led a series of studies to align and consolidate asset data across multiple campuses. We then measured patterns of building and place utilisation – including activity, mobility and connection between campus and the CBD.
We established a baseline and strategic place performance framework to be used as an active research tool to guide the university’s long-term masterplanning.
The development of a series of indexes and baseline indicators help define and contextualise the contribution the university’s 50,000-plus student population, buildings and campus make to the broader economic and cultural outcomes of the city.
“How can universities maximise the material use of campus buildings? Where is a campus’ hidden capacity to generate revenue? Does the university have too many under-utilised facilities? What assets can be divested?”
Norion Ubechel, CEO, Place Intelligence
Studies
- Building demand models for asset management, prioritisation, capital works and life-cycle strategies
- Campus index for smarter asset management and masterplanning strategiesÂ
- A public realm index for placemaking, wayfinding, landscape and public realm upgrades
- Audience intelligence revealed travel patterns to and from campus over time to optimise on campus real estate strategies and transport initiatives
- Best-practice urban renewal: established a baseline to measure change over time and place performance framework for place and project KPIs.
Impact
- Place Intelligence data analytics revealed deep insights on patterns of campus usage by diverse audience groups, informing our clients long-term asset management, capital works and masterplanning strategies
- Ranked the most and least used buildings and public spaces on campus
- Our activity models discovered patterns of demand and connection, including measuring interconnectedness between the university campus and CBD
- Measured campus activity over time, revealing valuable insights such as the building utilisation (building activity = 30% of total campus usage)
- Visitor patterns analysis, campus gateways, edge permeability and building-to-building movement
- Site permeability and campus leakage (25% of daily trips go off campus)
- We delivered valuable insights such as measuring midday economic leakage with 14% of users seeking off-campus amenity during lunch time hours
- Place Intelligence data informed development of a 30-year strategy for the university’s $4.5bn-plus estate, including program development, building prioritisation and capital works projects
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