What is RIBA?

RIBA is the Royal Institute of British Architects.

The RIBA Plan of Work is a way of looking at how to develop a new building. Architects use this method to plan the process of briefing, designing, constructing and operating building projects:

The stages that colleagues will be most involved in are stages 0-3, as these are the briefing and design stages. Later stages are mainly concerned with technical requirements to meet the client brief, though some colleagues may be involved with this.

At Sheffield Hallam, we have done things slightly differently to the standard RIBA stages, by taking faculty leads through early engagement activities in what we call stage -1 to RIBA stage 0.

What have we done to date?

The Engage toolkit was developed within Estates, through consultation with and following feedback from Faculties, to enable the Sheffield Business School and Social Sciences and Humanities faculty leads to express how their strategic ambitions would inform the design of the new buildings. The work we did in these early engagement sessions allowed each faculty to identify and articulate what it is they wanted to achieve; acting as a set of principles for us to work to in the next stage of the project.

At stage 1, BDP (a multi-disciplinary design company) was commissioned to run a series of workshops with academics from the faculties to explore the types of spaces required in the new buildings. Through engaging colleagues from across the organisation in these sessions, it allowed time for faculty considerations to be embedded into the brief (or stage 1 report) before the design work began.

What is in the stage 1 report?

The report references the Campus Masterplanning work that has been undertaken and summarises the outputs of our engagement activities with faculty staff. All aspirations and ideas have been captured within the stage 1 brief, along with an explanation of how each of these can be addressed in the design stage of the project.

What happens next?

We have developed the Hallam Alliance, which will be a long-term partnership between the University, a multi-discipline design team, a contractor and a facilities management provider. Our Alliance Partners will be appointed by July 2019, and we will work together to design and deliver the new buildings.

How can I get involved?

Later this year, we will be inviting faculty staff to a series of workshops to help involve them in the early building design stages. In parallel to this, we will also be developing several cultural change workshops with HROD to help address colleagues concerns in relation to changes happening across the workplace.

We will continue to work with colleagues through the next stages of design and communicate regularly throughout the whole lifecycle of the project.