Dundee College faces one of the biggest spring cleans in history with its scheduled move from four campuses to two sites at Kingsway and Gardyne Campus.
The £48 million building work at Gardyne is scheduled to finish at the end of May, when 3000 full-time students, 12,000 part-time students, and 200 staff will move.
Grant Ritchie, depute principal in charge of overseeing construction, sale of the old sites and the move itself, suggests this is an ideal time to be rid of anything that is not absolutely necessary.
And it is not just waste paper that has been uncovered during the initial spring clean, as a number of items from the fledgling days of IT have been discovered at the Constitution Road Campus.
These include eight-inch floppy discs from the Thatcher era, a slide projector, and something Sir Alan Sugar might be proud of two Amstrad portable computers, precursors to today’s laptops.
“We hired MovePlan, a world leader in large-scale removals, to work out the details of the move, tackle the logistics, and anticipate and solve any problems,” said Mr Ritchie. “In the company’s recent update, MovePlan project manager Neil Brown identified our filing storage needs in the run-up to the flit at around 3788 linear metres that’s three times the height of Ben Nevis.
“However the good news is that MovePlan estimated that as much as 23% (855 metres) could be disposed of, and that figure is expected to rise.”
In anticipation of the massive spring clean, the college estate department is ordering extra skips and additional waste containers including special waste bags for confidential materials. A clear-out began on Monday, and a colour-coded system of waste disposal is being put in place.
“We are issuing heavy duty black bags for the massive amount of paper waste which we anticipate,” said Mr Ritchie. “While blue bags are for confidential materials, we already employ a recycling company to deal with all our confidential waste paper and all the blue bags will be passed to them.”
Dundee College has an environmental strategy in place, so staff are being reminded not to mix general waste with paper, as the aim is to be able to recycle as much as possible,” Mr Ritchie added.