STEM optimization and consolidation planning builds stronger teams – helping them be more productive and connected.
Growth without growing. The magic bean. Doing more with what you’ve got. Institutions are searching for innovative ways to optimize STEM research productivity within their existing footprints. They’re trying to figure out how to accommodate growth, advance strategic imperatives, promote interdisciplinary research, make smart investments, and update infrastructure.
Meaningful growth and organizational planning often hit a wall due to physical constraints, pushing the issue into the hands of space and facilities planners to solve. After a cursory review, they usually find little or no unassigned research space which blocks most first tier options. Aging building systems limit renovation opportunities and space use, making lab fit-outs more costly or simply not practical.
The swing space needed for renovations is often not available or seen as too difficult to free up. The conventional approach to this problem has been to build new space, swing into it, clear out the old, and then renovate (or demolish) what’s left. Tried and true, easy to do. But this old stand-by can miss the point. Expansion is not necessarily optimization. And sometimes expansion is not in the cards.
A STEM optimization plan discovers overlooked efficiencies that can increase capacity, capability, and productivity. Working with what you’ve got requires a deeper dive into enabling research teams at the project level. Finding connections that may not be obvious.
It means creating pathways to guide research priority. Developing strategies for mid-career boosts. Filling gaps, known and unknown, be it with new collaborators or technical support. And being smarter about equipment (hybrid use – the second magic bean). Doing all of this while still providing the right amount of “air” in the system to provide the ability to test, experiment, and respond to new opportunities.
Insightful consolidation planning and careful sequencing can create more effective collaborations and sharing – the third magic bean. Consolidation has an image problem; it’s not just about blind efficiency. It’s about building teams; making them stronger and more connected. Consolidation can find and release potential.
But projects like this can get hung up when decision makers face front line concerns over the disruption of research continuity. At face value, it can be seen as counter to the mission. And sometimes that can be true; moving research teams just to make way isn’t consolidation. It’s just moving without purpose.
The same goes with an oversimplified co-location strategy; grouping similar work together is sometimes not worth the cost or disruption. That’s the difference between basic space planning and true research optimization (this goes for teaching optimization as well).
A good integrated optimization plan proposes what to do and how to do it. You have to get really good at lab activation to make it work, but it can be done. And it may just be the difference between doing it and not.
Effective operations – whether internal or outsourced – make strategic planning possible, contrary to popular belief. Sometimes you need to take a big swing — and if it’s possible and can be funded, can make optimization easier. Other times, a steady, incremental approach guided by the right optimization plan gets the project done and the organization moving forward.
Dynamic institutions need levers, ones they know how to pull, not rigid prescriptive solutions when adapting to growth needs and research opportunities. An actionable optimization plan provides strategic direction, guides incremental investment, and creates options.