Infrastructure investment plan 2015: 2016 progress report

Further and Higher Education

There are a number of projects being supported by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council ( SFC) across both the further and higher education sectors.

The following projects were completed in 2016 with this support:

• The £53.6 million Ayrshire College (Kilmarnock Campus) opened to students in October 2016. The project in East Ayrshire has provided state of the art learning facilities and was delivered by way of the SG's NPD investment programme.
• The City Campus in Cathedral Street which forms part of the £228.6 million City of Glasgow College project and which is one of the largest specialist college buildings in Europe opened to students in August 2016. This follows the building of the Riverside Campus which opened in August 2015. The project was delivered by way of the SG's NPD investment programme.
• SFC grant funded a £6 million development of a joint school/college facility in Levenmouth which opened in summer 2016.
• £10 million supported construction of a biomass energy centre at the University of St Andrews Guardbridge campus which completed in November 2016.

Ongoing major college projects include:

• Forth Valley College - £83 million new Falkirk campus. The Full Business Case ( FBC) was approved in December 2016 and the project is now in procurement. The FBC outlines that the project will be operational by October 2019.
• Fife College - £86 million new West Fife campus in Dunfermline. Fife College is currently preparing a FBC for submission to the SFC by May 2017. It estimated that the project will be operational by August 2020.

Other ongoing supported projects include:

• SFC contributed £10 million to a £25 million project to support the building of a Large Animal Research and Imaging Facility ( LARIF) at Edinburgh University (Easter Bush Campus). This is due to be completed in August 2017.
• SFC provided £8 million to install a Combined Heat and Power District Energy Network at Strathclyde University and this due for completion in October 2018.
• SFC contributed £3.5 million over 2013-2015 to support the construction of the Lyell Centre whose facilities will enable the British Geological Survey ( BGS) and Heriot-Watt University ( HWU) to build on their individual and combined interdisciplinary expertise in land and marine conservation, geology and geoscience.
• SFC will contribute up to £5 million alongside a £5 million contribution from UK Government towards the restoration of the Mackintosh building. The building is now in the formal construction phase which is scheduled to complete in January 2019 with the Glasgow School of Art taking academic access in September 2019.
• SFC is contributing £3.6 million to upgrade the Janet network infrastructure supporting Scotland over 2017-18. This will involve increasing the backbone capacity and improving the network's resilience to cyber-attacks.
• In 2016-17 SFC supported the development of business cases for energy efficiency retrofit projects in the college sector, to be supported by £5 million economic stimulus funding from Scottish Government (working with Scottish Futures Trust). We are also exploring the use of a new financial transaction facility from Scottish Government to support a programme of energy efficiency projects in the university sector, to be implemented from 2017-18 onwards.
• In 2014 SFC announced an additional £14 million of capital funding for the 8 Innovation Centres to support their work linking academia to business. This was later complemented by additional capital funding of almost £0.5 million from Scottish Enterprise ( SE) for the Innovation Centre for Construction. The Innovation Centre for Construction is using its share of the funding to buy state of the art prototyping and testing equipment. Funded by Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, SFC and SE, the new industry-led facility will deliver 30,000 sq. ft. of workshop space housing state-of-the-art construction and manufacturing equipment, complete with a 5 tonne overhead gantry crane for heavy lifting.