Kia ora team,
We had some concerns about the ‘squeeziness’ of shelving and seating layouts on Levels 6, 7 and 9 in PJH, and asked FM to work with fire engineering consultants and undertake a fire egress compliance assessment of these floors. The last assessment was undertaken in 2011.
Initial findings:
Library managers were briefed earlier today on initial findings, which show we have some issues:
- We need to reduce the number of seats on Level 9 down to 60 seats in total.
- We don’t have the required 1m clearance around the shelving/seating in certain places on each of these floors. This is exacerbated by library users spreading out their bags and gear, thereby blocking fire exit routes.
Now:
First thing tomorrow morning (before the library opens and students arrive) we are removing enough seats on Level 9 to bring the overall floor quantum down to 60. We are prioritising the removal of seats that abut onto range ends (i.e. those seats that create most obstacle where they are currently). Those excess seats from Level 9 will be relocated to our Level 5 staff workroom area for temporary storage, so they don’t take footprint elsewhere that can be used for students/study spaces.
Today we are also deploying signage throughout the building to ask users to put their bags/packs under desks, to keep fire exits clear.
Next:
We are still awaiting confirmed findings and receipt of the report. In the meantime, we have asked the fire engineering consultants to:
- assess every floor in PJH. This is so we can understand how best we can configure each floor, to ensure compliance across the whole building
- provide floor plans of shelving/furniture layouts on each floor, which ensure we are compliant. Note, we may need to reconfigure shelving layouts and move some sections of collection off some floors to create the 1m clearance around range ends, but this is to be confirmed.
Communications and questions:
There will be communications with the wider university, particularly Library Committee and our UCSA reps. In the meantime, I’m keeping Ian (our DVC-Research) in the loop, who is liaising with other senior leadership team (SLT) colleagues.
This represents an opportunity to get things right and make things better, but I appreciate it is a big body of work, in the mix of other big pieces of mahi on our plate!
Please don’t hesitate to ask me or your manager if you have any questions or concerns.
Kat