Preference-based Accommodation Strategy - A pilot study in scheduling and planning at the Delft University of Technology

One of the long-standing issues in the field of corporate real estate management is the alignment of an organisation’s real estate to its corporate strategy. Despite extensive research, existing approaches have not had much uptake in practice and fall short in a number of aspects (H 2011). In 1995, Dutch universities became owners of their real estate, and since then they are confronted with the same issue of alignment. Investments in real estate need to be weighed against investments in education or research programs, making campus management more challenging with more stakeholders, opportunities and threats to consider. Furthermore, this allocation of resources is put under pressure because of decreasing public involvement and funding for Dutch universities. As a result, campus managers have indicated that they need better information and tools to support campus decision making. (DH 2011)To enhance real estate decision making we tested the Preference-based Portfolio Design methodology (PBPD) (A&B 2012) in a gaming context. In this methodology decision makers define criteria and iteratively test and adjust these criteria by designing new real estate portfolios. The new portfolio with the highest overall preference is suggested as the portfolio which optimally aligns real estate to corporate strategy. This process is termed ‘Preference-based Accommodation Strategy’ (PAS). PAS is tested at the Delft University of Technology (DUT) for its real estate portfolio of lecture halls. New portfolio design are made based on 1) stakeholder preferences, in order to optimally align real estate to corporate strategy; and 2) the feasibility of the university’s timetable, in order to ensure that the portfolio design is able to accommodate the university’s programs. The decision makers could not only choose from real estate interventions but also from organizational interventions, which change the scheduling process. The tests done at the DUT prove that the participants are able to use the PBPD methodology to define criteria and that they are able to design portfolios with a higher overall preference. The results suggest that PAS can be used as a tool to align real estate to corporate strategy and to support campus decision making.