Enter the myriad “possibilities” facing Robert Frosch. As a professor of civil engineering and the college’s associate dean of resource planning and management, Frosch has been researching how best to find, reconfigure and/or create space for the most ambitious growth in the college’s history. The current strategic growth initiative, which promises to expand the college’s educational and research enterprises by nearly one-third in five years, cannot happen without more space.

The ambitious plan endorsed by the Purdue Board of Trustees is targeting an influx of 107 new engineering faculty members — an increase of 30 percent — and a proportionate wave of staff and graduate students. The undergraduate student body is expected to grow by 10 percent. The goal is to educate more engineers to meet national demand, and to do so in a way that moves Purdue’s famously high standard of engineering education even higher.

Robert Frosch

Getting creative

Like all creative problem solvers, Frosch and his space planning team have approached the need for space with a no-rules brainstorming policy. Any idea, no matter how unconventional, gets its due.

“We’ve been figuring this out — even looking at wild ideas. We’ve looked at what’s being done in industry for new ways that people work and finding parallels where we can,” Frosch says. “We are in a digital age, so telecommuting has been in the mix, though it’s not considered a long-term or optimal solution.”

Frosch says they need to configure new space and rethink existing spaces with a priority to provide what is needed for a largely digital workplace.

Digital dematerialization

Industry’s new paradigm involves so-called mobile offices used by a growing list of companies including Eli Lilly, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Heinz, Campbell Soup and Google.

With all needed files accessible in a portable laptop and a jump drive or two, an office that once had walls covered with file cabinets and desks with plenty of storage can be reduced to a backpack. This modern reality has Frosch and his team looking at economies of shared space — particularly for today’s highly mobile graduate students who have always taken working digitally for granted.

And while the digital age is driving much of the team’s space strategizing, cost containment is, too.

Containing costs

“The economy has helped drive the corporate world to this new way of thinking,” Frosch says. “They lacked the finances to build new facilities, so when they were expanding workforces or moving, they looked at how they could do that without expanding their footprint. They were also looking to improve collaboration and innovation.”

He says the college is looking at ways to grow efficiently and economically while minimizing renovation, construction and energy costs.

Balancing needs

Frosch acknowledges that faculty and many administrative staff will need space that accommodates their less portable work as well as their need for private conferencing space, among other needs specific to their educational mentoring and research endeavors. And careful considerations need to be made regarding lab space, which is often tailored to specific research needs.

“There’s a real question as to how all this would translate to a university. We are being careful to discern where these space economies don’t make sense and where they do,” Frosch says.

Sharing resources

“For situations where a desk is used only 30 percent of the time, you can assign multiple people — but not to the same desk. That’s where people can get confused. They may think, ‘I have to share my desk with someone.’ Not so. For example, there can be 100 physical workspaces on a given floor, but 170 people are assigned, knowing that not everyone is there at the same time. The idea is that at any given time, some people are in meetings, conference rooms, classes, labs, or eating lunch,” Frosch says. “By having all of the workspaces as shared resources, everyone has access to a desk.”

When people are assigned to these kinds of spaces, he adds, each person receives his or her own private storage space.

“A pilot at Purdue’s Bowen Lab is currently underway,” he says. “The graduate student space needed electrical renovations, so we saw that as an opportunity to demonstrate new ideas and what can be achieved.”

While that pilot happens, Frosch says, his team has been developing several specific solutions to other space needs. All or some of them could be used eventually.

Considering all options

“We’re planning renovations, additions and new construction,” he says. Major renovations of existing facilities are fundamental to expand capabilities on the central campus and achieve increased efficiencies, both in space and energy. These planned renovations not only improve the space but completely transform the work environment using innovative workspace design concepts. These renovations take decades-old buildings and bring them into the 21st century. The first major renovation will be at Grissom Hall, to be followed by the Electrical Engineering Building, Hampton Hall of Civil Engineering, the Mechanical Engineering Building and Potter Engineering Center.

The planners also foresee an expansion of the Martin C. Jischke Hall of Biomedical Engineering, an expansion of testing capabilities at Zucrow Laboratories, and a new flexible research lab at Discovery Park. The flex lab will be a multidisciplinary research facility designed to meet the needs of today’s diverse research portfolio and adapt to the changing needs of the future. The facility will provide a transformative environment that encourages collaboration, team-based research, learning and engagement among peers with diverse research interests.

A master planner is currently completing a study evaluating two horizons: A five-year horizon that addresses immediate growth and a 20-year horizon.

“We don’t want to do something in the five-year, shorter term that jeopardizes where we’re headed for the longer term,” Frosch says, “so we’re looking at both so that we take in all possibilities and provide the best platform for the future.”