SECTION 17.3. Definitions

The following words and terms shall have the following meanings, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.

(1) Acquisition--To come into possession or control of real property or facilities. This includes the acceptance, purchase, lease-purchase, transfer, or exchange of land or facilities.

(2) Academic Facilities--Facilities used for primary instruction, research, and public service functions of the institution. Academic facilities typically would include classrooms, libraries, administrative and faculty offices, and student and research laboratories.

(3) Addition--Expansion or extension of an existing facility that increases its size or capacity.

(4) Assignable Area of a Building--The sum of all areas within the interior walls of rooms on all floors of a building assigned to, or available for assignment to, an occupant or use, excluding unassigned space. This is also referred to as net assignable square feet (NASF).

(5) Athletic Facilities--Facilities used for athletic programs, including intercollegiate athletics, intramural athletics, and athletically oriented academic programs.

(6) Auditorium or Assembly--A room, hall, or building designed and equipped for the assembly of large groups for such events as dramatic and musical productions, devotional activities, livestock judging, faculty/staff meetings, or commencement. Included are theaters, concert halls, arenas, chapels, and livestock judging pavilions. Assembly facilities may also serve instructional purposes to a minor or incidental extent.

(7) Auxiliary Enterprise Buildings or Space--Income-generating structures and space such as dormitories, cafeterias, student union buildings, stadiums, athletic facilities, housing or boarding facilities used by a fraternity, sorority, or private club, and alumni centers used solely for those purposes. Auxiliary space is not supported by State appropriations.

(8) Board or Coordinating Board--The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board members and the agency staff.

(9) Building--A structure with at least two walls for permanent or temporary shelter of persons, animals (excluding animal caging equipment), plants, materials, or equipment that is attached to a foundation, roofed, serviced by a utility (exclusive of lighting), is a source of maintenance and repair activities, and is under the control or jurisdiction of the institution's governing board, regardless of its location.

(10) Building Replacement Estimate Report--A report that provides an overall estimate of the campus' buildings replacement cost. The Board produces this report to aid institutions in reporting their deferred maintenance needs as a percentage of the total campus' replacement value.

(11) Educational and General (E&G) Building Replacement Estimate--A comparative indicator of the relative condition of facilities calculated by dividing the deferred maintenance backlog by the current Building Replacement Estimate. This may be calculated for an individual building, group of buildings, or an entire campus.

(12) Institution-Wide Building Replacement Estimate--The institution-wide relative value of an institution's facilities, as determined annually by the Board. The method of calculation is based on approved Board project costs. Building Replacement Estimates are calculated for Educational and General space and Institution-Wide space. A 25 percent add-on is included to account for the cost of necessary infrastructure. These are NOT to be used for insurance purposes.

(13) Campus Condition Report--A report outlining facility maintenance needs in the areas of deferred maintenance and critical deferred maintenance.

(14) Campus Master Plan--A detailed long-range plan of institutional physical plant needs, including facilities construction and/or development, land acquisitions, and campus facilities infrastructure; the plan provides long-range and strategic analyses and facilities development guidelines.

(15) Certification--Institutional attestation of reports or other submissions as being true or as represented.

(16) Classroom--A room used for scheduled classes. These rooms may be called lecture rooms, lecture-demonstration rooms, seminar rooms, or general-purpose classrooms. A classroom may contain multimedia or telecommunications equipment, such as those used for distance learning. A classroom may be furnished with special equipment (e.g., globes, maps, pianos) appropriate to a specific area of study. A classroom does not include conference rooms, meeting rooms, auditoriums, or class laboratories.

(17) Class Laboratory--A room used primarily by regularly scheduled classes that require special-purpose equipment for student participation, experimentation, observation, or practice in a field of study. Class laboratories may be referred to as teaching laboratories, instructional shops, computer laboratories, drafting rooms, band rooms, choral rooms, group studios. Laboratories that serve as individual or independent study rooms are not included.

(18) Clinical Facility--A facility often associated with a hospital or medical school that is devoted to the diagnosis and care of patients in the instruction of health professions and allied health professions; medical instruction may be conducted, and patients may be examined and discussed. Clinical facilities include, but are not limited to, patient examination rooms, testing rooms, and consultation rooms.

(19) Committee--The members of the Board appointed to consider facility-related issues.

(20) Commissioner--The chief executive officer of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board agency.

(21) Cost--The portion of the total project costs that are reported by the institution as being for the actual cost of construction, repair/renovation, or the actual purchase price for improved real property purchases. Not included are costs associated with site acquisition (for construction projects), closing costs (for improved real property purchases) fixed equipment, site development, furniture and moveable equipment, construction services, life safety compliance, professional services fees, demolition costs, eminent domain costs, environmental development, or contingency amounts.

(22) Critical Deferred Maintenance--Any deferred maintenance that if not corrected in the current budget cycle places its building occupants at risk of harm or the facility at risk of not fulfilling its functions.

(23) Deferred Maintenance--The accumulation of facility components in need of repair or replacement brought about by age, use, or damage, for which remedies are postponed or considered backlogged, that is necessary to maintain and extend the life of a facility. This includes repairs postponed due to funding limitations.

(24) Education and General (E&G) Space--Space used for teaching, research, or the preservation of knowledge, including the proportional share used for those activities in any building or facility used jointly with auxiliary enterprise, or space that is permanently unassigned. E&G space may be supported by state appropriations.

(25) E&G Cost--E&G Space/Total Space x Cost. The costs associated with the E&G space included in a project. This is determined by dividing the E&G assignable square feet by the total project assignable square feet and then multiplying the result by the cost.

(26) Efficiency--The proportion of the gross square feet that can be assigned. This is determined by dividing the net assignable square feet by the gross square feet.

(27) Energy Systems--Infrastructure in a building that includes facility electric, gas, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and water systems.

(28) Energy Savings Performance Contract--A contract for energy or water conservation measures to reduce energy or water consumption or operating costs of institutional facilities in which the estimated savings in utility costs resulting from the conservation measures is guaranteed to offset the cost of the measures over a specified period.

(29) Facilities Audit--Comprehensive review of institutional facility development, planning activities, and reports.

(30) Facilities Inventory--A collection of building and room records that reflects institutional space and how it is being used. The records contain codes that are uniformly defined by the Board and the United States Department of Education and reported by the institutions on an ongoing basis to reflect a current facilities inventory. The facilities inventory includes a record of property owned by or under the control of the institution.

(31) Capital Expenditure Plan (MP1)--A detailed formulation of institutional programs to address repairs, renovations, deferred maintenance, critical deferred maintenance, facilities construction, demolition, property acquisitions, or infrastructure.

(32) Gift--A donation or bequest of money or another tangible item, a pledge of a contribution, or the acquisition of real property or facilities at no cost to the state or to the institution. It may also represent a method of finance for a project.

(33) Gross Square Feet (GSF)--The sum of all square feet of floor areas within the outside faces of a building's exterior walls. This includes the areas, finished and unfinished, on all floors of an enclosed structure, i.e., within the environmentally controlled envelope, for all stories or areas which have floor surfaces.

(34) Improved Real Property--Real property on which there are buildings or facilities.

(35) Information Resource Project--Projects related to the purchase or lease-purchase of computer equipment, purchase of computer software, purchase or lease-purchase of telephones, telephone systems, and other telecommunications and video-teleconferencing equipment.

(36) Infrastructure--The basic physical structures needed for the operation of a campus to include roads, water supply, sewers, power grids, telecommunications, and so forth. Systems within five feet of a building are considered building systems and are not infrastructure.

(37) Institution or institution of higher education--A Texas public institution of higher education as defined in Texas Education Code, §61.003(8), except a community/junior college.

(38) Legislative Authority--Specific statutory authorization.

(39) Lease--A contract by which real estate, equipment, or facilities are conveyed for a specified term and for a specified rent. Includes the transfer of the right to possession and use of goods for a term in return for consideration. Unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, the term includes a sublease.

(40) Lease-Purchase--A lease project that includes the acquisition of real property by purchase, gift, or any other voluntary transaction at some future time.

(41) Mixed Use--Facilities that have a mixture of uses. These may include facilities that are E&G and non-E&G.

(42) Net Assignable Square Feet (NASF)--The sum of all areas within the interior walls of rooms on all floors of a building assigned to, or available for assignment to, an occupant or use, excluding unassigned areas. NASF includes auxiliary space and E&G space.

(43) New Construction--The creation of a new building or facility, the addition to an existing building or facility, or new infrastructure that does not currently exist on campus. New construction would add gross square footage to an institution's existing space.

(44) Parking Structure--A facility or garage used for housing or storing vehicles. Included are garages, boathouses, airport hangars, and similar buildings. Barns or similar field buildings that house farm implements and surface parking lots are not included.

(45) Phased Project--A project that has more than one part, each one having fixed beginning and ending dates, specified cost estimates, and scope. Phased projects consider future phase needs in the project plan; each phase is able to stand alone as an individual project.

(46) Project--The process that includes the construction, repair, renovation, addition, alteration of a campus, building, or facility, or its infrastructure, or the acquisition of real property.

(47) Project Review--The process used by the Board and Board staff to determine whether the project meets Board adopted standards for cost, efficiency, space need and space use.

(48) Purchase--The acquisition of and interest in real property in exchange for valuable consideration.

(49) Real Property--Land with or without improvements such as buildings.

(50) Repair and Renovation (R&R)--Construction upgrades to an existing building, facility, or infrastructure that currently exists on campus; this includes the finish-out of shell space. R&R may add E&G NASF space.

(51) Research Facility--A facility used primarily for experimentation, investigation, or training in research methods, professional research and observation, or a structured creative activity within a specific program. Included are laboratories used for experiments or testing in support of instructional, research, or public service activities.

(52) Shell Space--An area within a building with an unfinished interior designed to be converted into usable space at a later date.

(53) Space Need--The result of the comparison of an institution's actual space to the predicted need as calculated by the Board's Space Projection Model.

(54) Space Use--The determination of the efficiency of use in existing facilities as determined by institutional performance on accepted measures.

(55) Standard--Basis, criteria, or benchmark used for evaluating the merits of a project request or an institutional comparison to a benchmark.

(56) Technical Research Building--Space used for research, testing, and training in a mechanical or scientific field. Special equipment is required for staff and/or student experimentation or observation. Included are specialized laboratories for new technologies that have stringent environmental controls on air quality, temperature, vibration, and humidity. Facilities generally include space for specialized technologies, semiconductors, biotechnology, advanced materials, quantum computing and advanced manufacturing quantum computing technology, nanoscale measurement tools, integrated microchip-level technologies for measuring individual biological molecules, and experiments in nanoscale disciplines.

(57) Tuition Revenue Bonds Project--A project for which an institution has legislative authority to finance a construction or land acquisition project as provided for in Texas Education Code, §§55.01 - 55.25.

(58) Unimproved Real Property--Real property on which there are no buildings or facilities.

(59) University System--The association of one or more public senior colleges or universities, medical or dental units, or other agencies of higher education under the policy direction of a single governing board.

Source Note: The provisions of this §17.3 adopted to be effective November 11, 2021, 46 TexReg 7603