rate than that. There was normally neither a clear vision nor a timetable for planning or designing. In this project we defined vision, project plan and project definition report.
4.6. Vision
Without a clear vision every party has different opinion of the project. The vision was created together with all the parties: the staff from the school (including kitchen and cleaning), parents of the students, public administrators (from school office as well as maintenance department) and the chosen designers. However, all the designers were not yet chosen.
We gave two objectives for the vision building of the construction project:
1. to motivate participants to take part in the design process (specially school personnel) and
2. to use the vision later in the process as a tool for guiding the prioritizing the different needs and wishes.
A half-day session was organized by researchers and city personnel to build the common vision for the renovation project. In the beginning of the session all different parties presented their own view to the project. This was a good idea because it helped people realize that wishes and needs from different parties are numerous and it will probably not be possible to make them all come true. After this participants (all together 69 persons) were divided into smaller groups to discuss what kind of school would be wanted. Three different scenarios were given to the groups: small village school, lots of other activities than teaching, scenario of poorness (lots of students, little money) and specialized school (schools competing of students by specializing).
Ideas developed in the groups where next presented to other groups. Words like ‘safety’, ‘cosines’, ‘practical’ and ‘good acoustics’ came up. After this all participants cast their votes, each for the three most important things. Eight things that got the majority of the votes were
‘practical’ (21 votes); ‘safety’ (19 votes); ‘facilities that are versatile and can be changed accord-
ing to the needs and thus support specializing’ (13 votes);
‘the construction process is safe and of good quality’ (12 votes);
‘versatility’ (9 votes); ‘a school that emphasize culture and presentation’ (8
votes); ‘economical in the whole life cycle’ (7 votes); and ‘student must come first’ (7 votes).
The common vision was created in discussion, based on the voting of the participants, and it is as follows:‘‘Practical
and safe school that supports specializing by multipurpose rooms and that is economical in the whole life cycle as well as good quality’’.
All participants committed to making the vision come true and the project manager took the major responsibility of the matter. Afterwards participants were asked to give some feedback and that feedback appeared to be very positive. Many people in the meeting said that this kind of way to work should be used in every project.
4.7. Project plan
Naturally, it is not enough to build a vision in order to accomplish the renovation project. Also a strategy on how to concretize the vision is needed. The project plan contained e.g. the risk analysis of the process. The plan was written for the whole project and it was planned to be updated during the stages. The financing bodies also wanted the description of how the project shall be organized and some things were written in two places in the project plan and definition report.
4.8. Project definition report
The vision was written in the project definition report. The project definition report was written according to the guidelines given by the Finnish government since the town applied financial aid from the government. This stage was very demanding since the school needed to learn what is possible. The report contained the need specification, content and quality of the spaces, maintenance plan, the cost estimate, the organization plan of the project and some drafts of the designed school. During this stage they checked the need in details.
4.9. Design stage
The vision guided the design by giving the overall selection criteria. Also the definition report was used as a constraint and goal. The project plan gave guidelines of the organization of the design. The design started with activity cards of each space. These cards were filled by the teachers, kitchen personnel and other users of the building like cleaners. The pupils or parents were not able to participate in the design. These activity cards were also made so that the vision could be supported e.g. in every card there was a question of the multiuse possibilities. In practice most of the classrooms were also designed to be working rooms for the teachers and if this was not possible and the teacher would not have a working room the space for working was designed connected to the teachers room. The objectives were talked in details in the design meetings.
We aimed to improve the understanding of every party. In order to support the understanding of design decision of the classrooms we built a real size mock up. It was built simply with paperboards and old furniture, etc. with the teachers, facility department people and the architect.