Students
Primary users that demand uninterrupted access to the lab, high-speed computing, and up to date physical robotics hardware to complete coursework and capstone projects.
Stakeholders, Governance & Risk
Who this affects, and what could go wrong
A $100M facility changes things for a lot of people. This page introduced the stakeholders, explains who is accountable, and explores project risks and ethical constraints.
01 — Stakeholders
Internal
Faculty & Academic Leadership
Accountable for curriculum design and for incorporating opportunities for applied research into degree courses.
UFV Campus Facilities & Maintenance
Hiring builders to maintain, repair, and replace campus infrastructure as needed.
Campus Security & Support
Handling incidents that impact campus operations.
External
Federal & Provincial Government Bodies
Funding partners with an emphasis on regional economic development, digital readiness of the workforce, and measurable educational outcomes.
Co-op Placement Sponsors
Regional commercial actors in logistics, manufacturing, and hospitality that will be involved in co-op placements, sponsor applied research projects and hire graduates.
Local Fraser Valley community
Neighboring communities that need to be communicated with clearly about the impacts of their activities on the environment, and how the activities are zoned.
02 — Project Organization
The Project Manager mananges the 5 different departments.
Project Manager
Manages the three major project constraints: Scope, Time, Cost.
Financial Department
Manage budget, cost tracking, financial reporting and also find partnerships and potential sponsorship.
Design & Construction Department
Handles architecture design, engineering and construction.
Technology Department
Will be in charge up buying HPC, GPUs, networking, cybersecurity and IT infrastructure.
Research Department
Represent different faculties research requirements and will also adress student needs and usability.
Governance, Ethics, and Safety Department
Enforce guardrails covering Academic Intergrity, data privacy, transparency, fairness, accountability, and security standards.
03 — SWOT
Strategic position
The SWOT analysis shows potential strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the project.
Internal · Helpful
Strengths
- Academic scope and some good basic CIS courses across different departments
- Faculty Interdisciplinary collaboration
- New investment of almost certainly more than $100 million in the construction of a new facility
Internal · Harmful
Weaknesses
- Significant level of power consumption
- High initial demands on vendors.
- High initial capital costs associated with advanced computing and research infrastructure
External · Helpful
Opportunities
- Applied robotics/AI at the national level.
- Funding by industry and corporate donations
- Collaboration between disciplines within a faculty
- Increased opportunities for student research and experiential learning
External · Harmful
Threats
- High rate of technology and hardware obsolescence
- Resistance from the local community towards automation and job loss
- Potential construction and project cost overruns
04 — Risk Register
Comprehensive Risk Mitigation Framework
Every major risk is planned out with a rate of severity and probability.
R-01
Public Environmental Scrutiny
- External / Public relations
- High severity
- Medium probability
To overcome concerns about computing power footprint, integrate environmental aspects of public environmental scrutiny with public environmental contracts, on site solar supplementation, and liquid cooling infrastructure.
R-02
Hardware Supply Chain Delays
- Operations / Procurement
- High severity
- High probability
Multi-vendor supply chain procurement paths to be set up during Phase 1, and advance priority allocation to be given to specialized GPU architectures.
R-03
Rapid Hardware Obsolescence
- Technical / Financial
- Medium severity
- High probability
Create a dedicated reserve fund of $15M that is tied directly to the cost of the modular systems and only used for upgrades to the systems, with a frequency of 36 months.
R-04
Scope Creep Across Departments
- Management
- Medium severity
- Medium probability
Establish formal change control procedures, project management team must approve track of new hardware.
R-05
Community Pushback on AI Job Displacement
- External / Public relations
- Medium severity
- High probability
Conduct public outreach workshops to engage with local communities and address their concerns about AI taking jobs, showing how the centre is about collaboration with humans, upskilling workers, and economic development instead.
05 — Ethics & Sustainability
The constraints we accept
A facility at this scale needs its limits written down from the start.
Algorithmic Ethics & Data Governance
Large scale data processing and machine learning workflows will be processed by ARIC and therefore a robust ethical governance structure will be embedded within the ARIC facilities. All research data will be kept in accordance with the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act [8]. In addition, the guidelines for use of the facility account for an ethical impact assessment of algorithmic biases, data sovereignty, and human-in-the-loop protection measures for each applied AI project.
Social Equity & Inclusive Access
It will be available to all UFV students in a variety of academic disciplines, and will be an open access facility, not just a facility for advanced research. Scheduling slots and collaborative spaces will be retained that allow for interdisciplinary involvement.