The Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) intends to relocate its general office to the former Build SFU Think Tank adjacent to the food court in Maggie Benston Centre this week.
The new space, called the Club and Student Union Centre, will combine the services of both the general office and student union resource office, according to chief executive officer (CEO) Martin Wyant.
“There’s not anything new that is landing as a service at this point,” explained Wyant. “It’s just the same stuff, different place.”
Last week, the SFSS told The Peak that it does not expect any disruption for the general office during moving day on Monday, however the student union resource office will be unavailable, except by email.
The new office is slated to open the following day.
There is the potential for some service disruption during the move, but as of last week the SFSS said it did not expect to need to close the general office.
The move is intended to make use of the increased frontage of the Think Tank and implement a new model for delivering general services to students that will become a feature of the new Student Union Building, slated to be completed next year.
“In looking at that coming on stream, we said we should take the opportunity to model that now before we move so that we learn what works well, what we need to tweak,” Wyant said. “The idea is to try out the new service delivery model while we are here and then take that learning into the new building.”
Wyant said that some students already mistake the Think Tank, which until now housed administrative staff, for the general office.
“It is the most visible space that we have, it is right near the food court, we get a ton of traffic that walks by [t]here constantly,” said Wyant. “We often get students stopping in [t]here with questions because they assume [. . .] that [it] is a service delivery point.”
To accommodate the move, the administrative staff — including Wyant — will be moving to the resource office. The new offices will provide more privacy and space for the CEO to hold meetings, Wyant said.
The finance department will move into the former general office space and the finance office will become a meeting room primarily for the Board of Directors.
Wyant noted that he did not anticipate the move to be much of a cost for the society.
Eventually, Wyant said that front desk staff will be cross-trained to handle all of the inquires that come into the office in order to increase how efficiently with which they can offer help to students.
He acknowledged that there might be some confusion with the new model at first.
“I think with any change you are going to run into some of that,” he said.
