Reference no: EM133600452 , Length: word count:4000
Background - KARL
From Trains to Brains and back again!
Global University London (GUL) is a university in central London with big ambitions. Focusing on delivering world class teaching and research, it has grown to nearly 45,000 students and 15,000 members of staff. The university estate comprises over 400 buildings, mainly in around the Kings Cross and St Pancras areas of London but also across the rest of the capital city and the UK. These buildings meet a range of needs including research, teaching and learning, administration and student accommodation.
The Faculty of Engineering Sciences (FES) has received funding from the UK Collaboration for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UCRIC) for an exciting new project; To build a Kinetic Activity Research Laboratory (KARL) in London.
The university has issued the following statement:
KARL will be a unique facility that will explore they ways in which people interact with their environment.
It is envisaged this would be a space - around 4,000 sqm and 10m high in which the team can create life sized environments - a railway station, high street, town square, under controlled conditions. The team will then examine how people move and interact in these environments. The team will be able to change the environment - the profile, type and material on the floor, simulate lighting of any hue and intensity, create sound from the tiniest bird song to the most massive explosion, include olfactory sensations and much more.
This will allow the study of interactions at a micro scale - brain activity, skin response, mass distribution in the foot, eye movements and fixations, micro-physical movements of different parts of the body, emotional responses, physical displacements of people in response to environmental design or dynamic conditions (such as explosions or other movement).
Why do this?
The project will allow the effects of design upon people to be studied -capacity, flow, behavioural responses. The impact of the environment upon stress, contentment, fear and other perceptions such as the perception of fairness and inclusion can be studied in detail. Therapies or remedies can then be designed and tested.
KARL allows researchers in many disciplines to see what operational and design ideas would look, feel and work like, cutting the cost of trying out new ideas by testing them in a laboratory.
End of Statement.
Further information around the project will be released during the Semester.
Task
You are an independent project management consultant who has been engaged by the Director of Capital Projects for the Estates Department of GUL.
The Director is concerned about the KARL project. She is not sure if it is a project the organisation should be doing.
In 4,000 words write a report offering the Director advice around whether GUL Estates should deliver this project in its current form. You should take into consideration:
• The client and requirements
• The Brief
• The strategy of the organisation
You need to offer clear recommendations for the Director to consider.
Assessment Organisation
The length of the individual report is 4000 words + 10%. The limit excludes abstract, TOC, diagrams, references and appendices. The word count must be stated on the cover page.