In our previous Academic Insights post, When Expansion Is the Right Move, we explored how institutions can plan new projects that advance several priorities at once. But the decision to renovate, expand or build new starts with an even bigger question: what does the campus need to look like in the years ahead?
We sat down with two members of Timberline’s Senior Leadership Team: Tiffany Gallo, LEED AP, Vice President of Project Development, who brings 20+ years of experience shaping project direction, grounded in a background in estimating and preconstruction; and Matthew Dempsey, Project Executive, who has nearly 30 years of experience leading projects for institutions like Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth.
1. With funding and budget cuts, there is competition for capital on campus. Where should institutions start to appropriate the right dollars for their facility plan?
Matt: Start with the institution’s goals, not the building. Identifying what the school is trying to accomplish over the next five, ten or twenty years is more important than ever. Enrollment, student experience, academic programs, housing, athletics, the state of existing buildings and available funding all shape the strategy. The first question I ask is: what problems are we trying to solve? Sometimes a modest intervention accomplishes what initially looked like a much larger investment. A facility condition assessment is a useful starting point, because it puts deferred maintenance, code exposure and the remaining life of major systems alongside program wishes, so the trade-offs are visible rather than assumed. From there, it’s about making every dollar count, and that means looking at total project cost, not just the construction number. On a $500,000 project, costs outside the construction scope, like furniture, technology, moving and design fees, can quickly eat into the budget if they aren’t managed, and suddenly you’re designing a smaller program around what’s left. Carrying a realistic contingency and an allowance for escalation in the earliest budget protects the program from those surprises.
2. How do you help schools balance what has to get done with what will move facility projects forward?
Tiffany: Every institution is weighing infrastructure, accessibility and deferred maintenance against the programs that generate revenue and the high-profile spaces donors want to fund, like a new science lab. The two are rarely separate. A lab is only as good as the ventilation, power and structure behind it, and a naming gift often doesn’t cover the building systems that make the space work. A renovation can also trigger required upgrades to accessibility, fire protection and energy performance, so those costs belong in the budget from day one, not midway through design. The most effective approach is to sequence the work so that necessary upgrades are folded into projects that advance the mission, instead of sitting on a separate list that never reaches the top. That takes a detailed plan with a cost attached to each need, so leadership and trustees are weighing real numbers. Because our team brings design, preconstruction and construction expertise together, we can price and sequence all of those pieces at once, so funding goes to the institution’s highest priorities first.
3. When you evaluate a campus, what are you looking for from a construction perspective that others might not?
Matt: From a construction perspective, I’m thinking about what’s behind the walls and under the campus: MEP systems, utility capacity, building condition, phasing, logistics and how construction will affect daily operations. Is there enough electrical service and heating and cooling capacity for a new program, or does a central plant or campus utility need to be upgraded first? In older buildings, hazardous materials like asbestos and lead paint are often present, and finding them mid-project is costly in both dollars and schedule. On an occupied campus, access routes, summer construction windows and the academic calendar can matter as much as the design itself. When a project is scoped to fix one thing, other deficiencies in the building often surface, and the project grows or stalls. Identifying those up front, through early investigation, lets the school decide what to resolve now and what to defer, before design dollars are committed.
4. What separates the most successful academic building projects?
Tiffany: Involving an integrated team with varied expertise in strategic planning from the start. That means knowing the campus inside and out, walking building by building with the facilities staff and understanding how the campus really works. Capital planning directors spend a lot of time keeping end users, facilities and leadership aligned. We see projects through all of those lenses and can help translate between them. The projects that go well tend to have three things settled before design starts: a ranked set of priorities, a scope that has been priced against the budget, and a schedule built around the academic calendar instead of fitted to it afterward. At Malden Catholic, that big-picture approach opened up a new revenue stream. By identifying the opportunity to add a middle school to the existing high school program, we helped the school grow enrollment while staying within its financial plan. That’s what success looks like: a project that delivers more for the institution than it set out to.
The Takeaway
When resources are stretched, the most valuable decisions happen before design begins. Master planning connects an institution’s goals to the realities of its existing buildings, and sometimes the right answer isn’t a new building at all. As Matt puts it, “Don’t make the building the first decision. The best capital project isn’t necessarily the biggest one; it’s the one that best supports the institution’s mission and long-term plan.” Involving expertise from the start helps schools test their options, understand the true cost of each and invest where it matters most.
This article is part of our Academic Insight Series. Up next, we talk about flexible academic spaces that adapt over time.
