UBC asking for your help to synchronize its 1,800 clocks
Time is of the essence for the University of B.C. in its search for a new clock system.
Turns out there are several time pieces on campus that are nearly a century old.
It also turns out the 1,800 clocks scattered across the 100 or so buildings on the Point Grey campus are run on five different systems.
One of those systems is so out of date the manufacturer will no longer support it.
Now the university is asking for ideas on how to replace all five systems.
It will likely cost around $200,000 said John Metras, UBC’s associate vice-president of campus facilities.
“We have a variety of legacy systems that really need to be replaced because they’re outdated and in some cases the manufacturers no longer support them.”
The ideal system will have digital displays, which can be used to relay messages to staff and students.
Anyone who has attended UBC knows time can vary between buildings. Some clocks in the chemistry building date to the earliest days of the university.
“They’re definitely heritage time pieces,” Metras said of the clocks, which date from the 1920s and ’30s. (They’ve been refurbished over the years, he added.)
And the problem isn’t just having unsynchronized clocks — it’s also the cost of having so many clocks on campus that need to be reset manually after a power failure, or to deal with daylight time. “There’s a cost to doing all that.” Setting up a new clock system in an age where everyone has a phone and often a watch may seem a bit goofy, but Metras said there are still many cases where having wallmounted time pieces are needed.
“It comes down to situations where the phones aren’t allowed,” he said, such as exams, or labs that are running experiments using sensitive equipment.
The search for ideas will go on for four weeks.
University officials will then review the proposals and assess technical availability and costs.
If a solution is quickly found, “we could begin work as soon as this summer.”