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Physical and digital infrastructure

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Our students

Our students

Strategic priorities

Our university-wide physical and digital infrastructure enabling plan involves the future development of our campus including digital and data transformation, future ways of working, blended learning and how we best develop and use our physical space, all designed to evolve our University to support people to give their best.

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Progress during the past year with an eye to the future

Physical infrastructure

The return of activity on campus following the easing of Covid restrictions was a welcome return to normality with colleagues, students, visitors and the public bringing the campus back to life. The continuation of our capital projects also brought a sense of normality and progress to the campus and, in the case of The Henry Daysh Building, provided outstanding new facilities. The £60m project was completed at the end of August 2021, just in time for the start of the new academic year. The building has been extremely well received with positive feedback from colleagues and students alike.

The Stephenson Building and Sir Terry Farrell building projects are progressing well despite the challenges of a volatile supply chain and high levels of inflation. The redevelopment of the Stephenson Building, part of our School of Engineering, has attracted significant interest both regionally and nationally and the completion of the building’s structural elements provide us with an insight into what a huge asset the building will be to the University. The project is scheduled to complete in two phases, with the first phase completing for the start of the 2023–24 academic year and the second phase completing the following year. The Sir Terry Farrell project is due to complete in November 2022, with the official opening scheduled for February 2023. Ongoing investment in our long-term maintenance programme continues to ensure that our estate condition and functional suitability continues to be well above the Russell Group benchmark and sector norm, despite the supply chain issues and contractor resource that have hampered this work.

The masterplan for the former Newcastle General Hospital site, which will see the site developed as a world-leading facility for development and promotion of healthy ageing, has received outline planning permission from the city planners. Following an extensive tender process, Genr8 Kajima Regeneration Limited have been appointed as development partners for the site. Further masterplan development work is now ongoing, and a development phasing plan is being established.

Student numbers in accommodation remained steady during 2021–22 following the flexible start dates provided to international students to assist with travel arrangements. We housed a total of 3,439 students in University-owned accommodation and an additional 1,133 in commercial student accommodation schemes through nominations agreements. Average occupancy for University-owned accommodation has achieved over 95% per month for the academic year 2021–22 with limited numbers of students withdrawing.

Long-term maintenance investment in accommodation of around £1.7m has been made including significant investment at Bowsden Court to improve the kitchen and living spaces using sustainable methods.

The innovative approach and tireless work of our colleagues in Estates and Facilities was recognised in the Times Higher Education Awards in November 2021 winning Outstanding Estates Team of the Year

Net internal area of the estate is 249,050m2 an increase of 4,050m2

on the previous year

Newcastle University’s award-winning Catalyst building is home to the National Innovation Centre for Ageing and the National Innovation Centre for Data. The building was awarded BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ in recognition of its sustainable design. The internationally recognised BREEAM standard rates multiple criteria across the construction process, such as health and wellbeing, energy and material usage. The specialist facilities provide space for businesses and research specialists to work collaboratively on developing products and services to solve key societal and industry challenges.

Digital infrastructure

In 2021–22, we saw some structural changes within our IT Service as part of the Evolution Programme. We also introduced new governance arrangements and ways of working which ensure we are best placed to serve the complex demands of our diverse university.

We have been working hard to supply the digital tools our students and colleagues need to work effectively, in a way that suits them. We have helped to develop the classrooms of the future, employing state-of-the-art technologies in novel ways to enable a learning and teaching experience that reflects our changed learning landscape. Over 600 colleagues attended online skills workshops to help them work more effectively and get the best from digital tools such as Microsoft 365 apps, Teams and SharePoint.

Our online IT support hub, NUService, relaunched in January 2022. The upgrade allows students and colleagues to request IT services and support with more ease and efficiency, and allowing better reporting which helps us to make ongoing improvements.

Our strategic programmes of work progressed, such as the groundwork for the implementation of new People Services modules utilising our existing ERP system, with the aim of delivering centralised, secure cloud solution which will increase the efficiency of our processes, improve the transparency of data and offer more opportunities for employee self-service. In September 2021, we launched the first phase of a new enterprise admissions system which gives a streamlined digital application experience for prospective students. It provides a clear route for students and agents to easily submit, manage and track their applications to study with us. We have made significant improvements to the University’s network and provided infrastructure connectivity for new capital projects.

We continue to invest in improving our cyber security controls to ensure our information and technology assets are adequately protected. We are establishing a Cyber Security Committee to oversee and advise on current cyber risk exposure and lead our future risk strategy. We have also delivered several security initiatives across our estate, including the update of over 12,000 managed devices to the latest release of Windows 10, ensuring they can run up-to-date applications securely.

Looking ahead and recognising the changes in working, teaching and learning practices, we have embarked on a project of stakeholder engagement to understand the requirements of our physical and virtual estate to support the University, our colleagues and our students in the future. This project will develop a new digital and physical masterplan.

1,800

laptops and docking stations replacing desktops 600

PCs upgraded in 18 cluster rooms 350

monitor upgrades 70+

audio visual upgraded venues 17

new rooms set up for hybrid teaching

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