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Trinity College Dublin

Dublin, Ireland

º£½ÇÊÓƵ worked with Trinity College Dublin to provide critical insights into shifting ways of working at a challenging time for the academic sector.

Universities around the world were faced by an overwhelming range of complexities when it came to getting students and staff safely back into teaching spaces after months of remote digital learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. For Trinity College Dublin, with its historic, often intimate learning spaces, it was an enormous challenge.

The institution sought support from º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s team of building analytics and people flow experts in planning this return for students post-lockdown.

Trinity College Dublin approached º£½ÇÊÓƵ to support its process of returning to face-to-face teaching after the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Our people flow specialists initially conducted a detailed desk-top study to analyse social distancing integration across the campus.

Our team also supported Trinity College with the safe reopening of The Book of Kells to tourists.

Challenge

With rules around social distancing changing often during the months after the initial Covid-19 lockdowns, it became vital for institutions like Trinity College Dublin to build a better understanding of its spaces and the way staff and students moved around in order to ensure their safety and comfort at this troubling time.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ was engaged to conduct a desk-top study, which would seek to map the campus and develop a detailed understanding of the capacities of the different teaching spaces in line with evolving Covid guidelines.

Solution

As part of the initial assessment, we developed algorithms that would provide robust guidance on the capacities of individual spaces that aligned the social distancing requirements dictated by the Irish government. This included a vast range of spatial analysis exercises for different teaching environments – from large lecture theatres to more intimate seminar spaces.

The next phase used dynamic people flow modelling coupled with º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s growing portfolio of benchmark data from similar projects within academic environments around the world, to map and analyse the student movements about campus and identify the interventions that would need to be set in place in different parts of the campus to maintain social distancing. This report played a critical role in supporting the university’s ability to plan, optimise and communicate its pandemic strategy and would have the impact of allowing the university to safely increase face-to-face teaching capacity by 40%, transforming the students’ experience at this critical time.

Trinity College also plays host to the historic illuminated manuscript The Book of Kells, which is housed in an exhibition that is one of Dublin’s most popular tourist attractions. Running alongside the project to manage the safe return of students to the campus, our team also advised the university on the safe return of tourists to visit the exhibition using a similar process of dynamic flow modelling and analysis. We also supported with the optimisation of a temporary exhibit, which will house The Book of Kells during the refurbishment of the main exhibition.

Value

Our team of experts was able to draw on a broad experience of working on similar projects in academic environments around the world to provide both an initial desktop study and the later interactive web dashboard to deliver critical insight at this challenging time for the university.