Keep the campus safe and the labs running

A university is a town of buildings with a lab in half of them. The estates team runs heating, lifts and fire checks across the campus, each faculty sees the equipment in its own labs, and the dashboard shows where the work and the spend went, by building and by period.

A school has one caretaker and a building full of people who notice things. Teachers report a broken radiator or a flickering light from a phone with a photo, the caretaker works through a queue sorted by priority, and the bigger works are scheduled for the holidays, when the building is empty.

An instrument that fails mid-experiment costs weeks, not hours. Every instrument carries its documents, service contacts and inspection dates, measurements are recorded pass or fail with the instrument and certificate they were taken with, and a freezer reading past its limit opens the job straight away.

Tenant labs share a building, and the plant that serves it. The park's own team looks after ventilation, compressed air and pure water, groups keep each tenant to its own equipment and jobs, and both sides work in one register without seeing each other's.

The first week of term brings every fault the summer hid. Jobs are sorted by priority and by block, rooms are checked on a schedule over the summer, and the parts that go most often are kept in stock with a minimum: locks, lamps, shower fittings.

Pools, sports halls and gyms are inspected for safety and judged by whoever walks in. Water treatment readings go on record at every check and open a job when they cross your limits, equipment inspections carry pass or fail with a due date, and the fault board shows the front desk what is out of order.