Space Management Glossary of Terms

Defined on this page:

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Rooms

A room is defined within the system as a space within a building on campus that is assigned to a department by Facilities. Rooms are allocated to PIs and faculty. The Space Management System will record the amount of space allocated, both in square feet and as a percentage. Any space or percentage of space unallocated to a PI or faculty is allocated the department's headquarters administrator, or HQA.  By default all space assigned to a supervisor is considered research space.

If your department is allocated multiple rooms, you can create roomsets to help manage your space allocation.  A roomset is a collection of rooms defined by you.  Please note that your role in the Roles database determines what you can view in the database.  Generally people will have access to only one department and its rooms.

Please NOTE: The space Management Liaison role in the Roles database determines what people and rooms you can see.

Space Management Liaison (SMSL)

Each unit must assign at least one person responsibility for maintaining the unit’s SMS records. These people are known as the Space Management Liaisons or the SMSL.

The SMSL is responsible for: Identifying the PI’s in the unit; working from the Institute’s Space Accounting records, identifying the PI who is responsible for each space. Working from the list of people with appointments in the unit, identifying each person’s PI. Verify that all space and all people are correctly coded.  This should be done on an on-going basis, but at least once annually.  New spaces and people will appear under the HQA and should be (re)coded, as appropriate.  The SMSL is also responsible for granting access to the SMS for other staff in the unit. For example, Graduate Administrators or HR Administrators could be granted access to assist with coding students and staff with the names of their respective

The Space Management Liaison cannot add rooms to their department or remove rooms from them, this would be done through facilities.

Headquarters Administrator (HQA)

All spaces and people within a unit that are not coded with the name of a faculty or research staff PI will be coded with the name of the unit’s Headquarters Administrator (HQA).  The HQA is an administrative staff member, normally the administrative officer, assistant director, or space coordinator for the unit. Each department will have one and only one HQA. Spaces coded with the name of the HQA will use a code starting with HQ.  By default, otherwise uncoded space and uncoded people are assigned to the HQA pending the correct coding by the Space Management Liaison.  Each department can only have one HQA.

Supervisor

In SMS, a supervisor is defined as the person responsible for the department’s space that is assigned to them.  Generally the supervisor is the Principal Investigator, faculty member, senior research scientist, or a principal research scientist of the department. A person does not have to hold an appointment within the unit to have the role of supervisor; for example, faculty members do not hold appointments in centers and labs, but they serve as supervisors in those units. An HQA is a supervisor of common space or unallocated space, such as a student lounge.

Supervisee

A supervisee is a person with an MIT appointment such as a staff member or a graduate student that uses a room.  They cannot supervise a room and they work for one or many supervisors.

Not Assignable (Department Personnel w/no space @MIT)

This tab lists people that do not have space assigned to them at MIT.  The Space Management Liaison adds people from his/her department to this list if for example someone in their group works from home or at a non-MIT site.  This tab is department specific; therefore if that person has space designated to them from a different department, they will remain on the list. The Space Management Liaison must remove someone manually from this list to be able to assign them to a supervisor.

Should be assigned in another department (Department Personnel w/no space in Department)

This tab lists people that do not have space assigned to them within their department.  The Space Management Liaison adds anyone in their department not assigned to space to this list.  If another department puts that person in a space, then they are automatically removed from he original department list.  This tab is used to be sure everyone in a department has space assigned to them and would be used if a person in a department works outside that department’s allotted space.

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