The o!Timetable product from ITS Abacus was recently successfully used to generate timetables at the newly commissioned campus of the Queen Margaret University in Scotland.
Queen Margaret University is a medium-sized university situated in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a student enrolment of approximately 5 000 students.
During 2000-2001, a decision was made to relocate the entire university, situated on three separate campuses in Edinburgh to a single new campus situated outside the city.
The new campus was designed as a single building with environmental sustainability and efficient space utilisation as the main goal. The number and type of academic teaching spaces were drastically reduced, based on space utilisation surveys and projections done at the existing campuses.
A decision was also made to move to central timetabling for more efficient management of the reduced space. The challenge was then not only to combine the academic timetables of three distinct campuses, but also to integrate and optimise the use of shared rooms across schools.
The new timetables were generated using the o!Timetable product from ITS Abacus, a lecture timetabling system developed by using ILOG optimisation tools and libraries. The system was used to capture all relevant academic and resource timetabling events and constraints, and to generate a timetable for the entire 2007-2008 academic year.
Optimisation focused on UK-based space utilisation measures used in the design of the building for room frequency and occupancy. Other important criteria were the even spread of classes for students, taking into account the limited availability of part-time staff members. Due to the location of the new campus and existing public transport systems, timetables also had to take into account the maximum number of students that can arrive by bus or train at any given time of the day.
As a result, the ITS Abacus o!Timetable solution was used to generate several timetables in a very short time span, allowing the refinement of the timetables based on additional criteria as the new campus reached completion. When contractors failed to complete the new building by the start of the academic period, the ITS Abacus o!Timetable was used to efficiently create 'emergency' timetables for the temporary use of the old campuses until the new building was completed. These temporary timetables were used without problems, ensuring that classes continued smoothly. Classes started at the new site at the end of October and the system is currently being used to manage and refine the timetables for the rest of the year. Preliminary results also indicate that the planned space utilisation figures were reached with the help of ITS Abacus and the power of mathematical optimisation in the o!Timetable product of ITS Abacus.
ITS Abacus specialises in the provision of sophisticated timetabling and resource booking software. The company is part of the "Integrated Tertiary Software" group of companies, which provides functionally rich ERP solutions to the education sector.
For more information, please contact marketing@its.co.za.
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