The McGill Sustainability Park’s architecture has been set for a while. Now, occupancy planning is ramping up.
Given that sustainability-related research is undertaken within all of McGill’s Faculties, the Park’s academic team has set up a structured process to evaluate how potential future occupants fit best together.
“From the beginning, the Sustainability Park was designed to support cross-disciplinary research rather than serving as the home of a single Faculty,” said Christopher Buddle, the newly appointed Deputy Provost (Academic).
“To help us determine who should move to the Park, we have established a set of principles and criteria: we are looking to balance strong sustainability alignment, projects that fit with lab infrastructure and a clear interest and experience in collaborating across disciplines. We are also looking to have a positive impact on space use across the institution and avoid moves and downtime that could jeopardize established research groups,” said Buddle.
As the team advances, it is also keeping financial considerations top-of-mind, as well as long-term research competitiveness and funding success.
Planning led by research needs
“To guide our work, we’ve divided our occupancy planning into three phases. The first, which we are wrapping up, is focused on natural sciences and engineering, areas that we expect to be anchoring the laboratories at the Park. We have also included non-STEM disciplines, like the Max Bell School of Public Policy, where we see early adopters of the Park’s collaborative research model,” said Rees Kassen, Academic Director of the Park.
“By looking at research themes and cross-disciplinary clusters, we were able to get a good sense of the technical needs for lab spaces,” said Kassen.
Anna Bendix, Director of Planning and Development for the Park, has been involved in the building’s design from the outset. An important part of her current work is understanding the needs identified by the academic team and adapting the labs accordingly. She has been undertaking “blue-sky” consultations with members of the McGill research community.
“Relative to the construction of a traditional university space, we are flipping the model,” said Bendix, who has extensive facilities experience.
“We have developed very exciting, activity- and team-based spaces. It’s an approach that differs from traditional wet lab design. Instead of beginning with what a lab should have, we’ve been focusing on potential research needs and flexibility, notably at the infrastructure level.”
Though budget implies limitations, Bendix said she believes that planning is being conducted in a way that will allow the building to accommodate a wide array of researcher space needs in state-of-the-art labs – notably through a set of core facilities, which will provide shared research platforms.
Seeking expressions of interest from researchers
As of this month, members of the Park team have moved into the second phase of occupancy planning for the laboratories: gathering and evaluation of expressions of interest from Faculties. Deans will work directly with their academic units on these expressions of interest and will highlight existing interdisciplinary clusters as well as interested principal investigators (PIs) who work in STEM-base laboratories.
“We have already identified some smaller McGill units that would fit well in the Park because of their clear alignment with its research mission. We’re now gathering additional information from PIs, including from areas like Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Arts, Medicine and Health Sciences,” said Kassen.
“We’re looking for expressions of interest that demonstrate a commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration and willingness to operate in shared, non-siloed environments. We also want to hear from researchers about how they could benefit from the Park’s new ReACT Hubs,” he added. ReACT is short for “research to action” and describes the Park’s collaborative, problem-solving model.
Considerations and decision-making
There are some considerations that researchers and their home Faculties should have in mind in considering whether to ask for space at the new project.
“McGill isn’t building general purpose labs in the Park. Also, infrastructure constraints matter, even while we dream big,” said Buddle. “We anticipate a lot of interest for these spaces and, for those who are offered a place in the new facilities, they will need to give up current spaces to other researchers. Overall, McGill needs more research space, and the Park is part of a larger solution.”
Decisions on occupancy will move ahead in a structured manner: after expressions of interest are submitted by Deans, a technical validation will be conducted by the Park’s planning team. If there is a good technical fit, evaluation moves to the Academic team for a recommendation, which will be submitted to the Office of the Provost for a decision.