Allocation of office spaces

Preface

The school aims to provide good physical working conditions for all staff – while making the best possible use of the available facilities and buildings.

The school management team is responsible for allocating the offices, taking into account the significant differences in office setups at the school’s locations as well as the principles below.

Principles for the allocation of offices

The overall criterion for the use of office space is functionality. A number of rooms are pre-allocated for shared functions such as meeting rooms, staff rooms, kitchens, mail rooms, storerooms etc.

The following principles apply to the allocation of offices for academic staff

  • As far as possible, private offices are offered to assistant professors, associate professors, professors and other full-time, tenured academic staff.
  • PhD students and postdocs are often provided with shared offices. The goal is to ensure that the smallest offices do not function as shared offices.
  • Access to office facilities is generally provided for fixed-term academic staff and, by agreement, if circumstances allow, also for emeritus professors, typically shared offices.
  • Office space can be made available for visiting researchers.
  • Departments, subjects, groups and sections are placed together as far as possible. Special areas can be established for, for instance, PhD students and staff on externally funded projects.
  • The head of school, director of studies, heads of department and secretariat managers are offered larger offices with space for meeting facilities as needed. Larger offices can also be allocated to other staff members with a management role or staff members with frequent meeting obligations (such as managers of large projects and centre directors). The entitlement to a larger office ends with the specific role that justifies it.
  • Needs, patterns of use and levels of use are taken into account when allocating offices. The duration of employment can also be a parameter. A title such as professor, however, does not inherently justify special requirements for office facilities.
  • The goal is to avoid unnecessary office relocations. Major relocation initiatives may arise from organisational changes or issues related to office space distribution.
  • If an office becomes vacant, colleagues (typically from the same department) are offered the opportunity to request to take over the vacant office. If several colleagues wish to take over the office, it is allocated to the staff member with the longest seniority, unless other special circumstances (such as problems identified during a physical workplace assessment) apply.