Facility Planning

Planning, Design and Construction - Planning (PDC-Planning) guides the early stages of developing projects for individual buildings, landscapes, and infrastructure. This process of planning for major capital facilities begins with PDC-Planning working alongside central administration and departmental user groups on project visioning, defining space needs, budgeting, locating the facility on a campus site, conceptual site planning, developing project design guidelines, managing approvals by the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR), and other special studies, plans, and project reviews as needed. This work includes many collaborations with other campus departments, such as Facilities Design and Construction, Real Estate Administration, and the Budget Office.

A number of specific types of products result from facility planning including the following:

Capital Improvement Plans (CIP)

Capital improvement planning involves defining project scopes and budgets and setting priorities amongst a series of proposed projects. This process, carried out annually, results in an ABOR-approved CIP document each fall.

Space Programming and Budgeting

This work involves defining types and quantities of spaces (labs, classrooms, offices, etc.) and the relationships between them based on the needs of users who will occupy proposed buildings. Space programs in turn become the basis for preliminary budgets. Information on space needs and budgets become key components of project justification/review documents prepared for campus administration and ABOR approval.

Site Master Plans

For some projects, particularly when part of a larger site development, a site master plan is prepared that defines the allocation of the site to different uses, conceptual building massing as well as open space and infrastructure needs.

Project Design Guidelines

For some capital projects, a unique set of design guidelines are prepared to help define the overall design character of the project. These guidelines are drawn on during the subsequent,  more detailed stages of design.

Additional information on the facility planning process for buildings, landscapes, and infrastructure can be found here.

Current Projects and Planning Along Sixth Street, Spring 2008