7.1 A LIVING DOCUMENT

The Campus Master Plan is a living document. It is meant to change and respond, yet continually inform decisions on how NWP buildings and campuses are developed over time. This document is designed to allow flexibility and adaptability over time.

A vibrant campus will evolve. It will change and priorities will shift in the fullness of time. Therefore, this document assumes that change will begin almost immediately after its publication. What needs to remain constant are the principles underpinning the document and the values that inform it.

Campus Master Plans that reach ahead on a time frame of decades have a history of being documents that remain unused as time wears on. That is almost always due to only having a planning document but no internal protocols to revisit the content, adjust that content every year, and continue to make the plan an evolving toolkit to assist strategic decision-making.

It is suggested that two ingredients need to be part of the institutional framework for a living document to become a reality:

• An internal keeper of the content of the facilities plans and its implementation. This has traditionally been the institution’s planning / facility management organ and exercised through campus planning committees or similar groups; and

• A champion of the plan at the senior administrative level of the institution. NWP has both the Steering Committee and the Facilities Team. The Steering Committee and the Facilities Team should formalize a plan review protocol to regularly assess and suggest changes to the plan as required, as part of the core institutions policy.