Author: Shaun Williams, Executive Director of Engagement and Advancement
Welcome to the first UEB blog of 2020.
The Vice-Chancellor started today’s meeting by wishing everyone a Happy New Year, and welcoming Richard Middleton to his first UEB as our new interim Chief Operating Officer (COO).
A number of issues were discussed under the Vice-Chancellor’s Business section at the start of this week’s meeting:
– The Vice-Chancellor referenced the Queen’s Speech of 19 December. He said there was nothing too surprising in respect of Higher Education, but it appears likely the new Government will be looking further at issues including the Augar review of post-18 education and funding, freedom of speech, value for money and grade inflation.
– The Vice-Chancellor updated UEB on what has been happening at a national level in respect of the industrial dispute around pay and pensions affecting a number of universities, including Southampton.
– UEB discussed and approved terms of reference for a new Planning and Resources Group (PRG). There is a recognition that UEB, as the senior executive committee providing advice to the Vice-Chancellor, can at times focus too much on the detail of operational delivery and resourcing rather than on its principal focus of the core University strategy and high-level overarching management principles. This has the effect of UEB getting involved in too much detail and then not being able to give enough time to the really strategic items and to those key management issues where an overarching university position is important. Although the resourcing of any decision is important, there should be a clear separation of the discussion and agreement to the principles of strategic direction from the detailed implications and planning for this.
Once fully established the new PRG, which will meet monthly, will manage the University’s Business Planning cycle, ensuring that Faculty and Professional Services plans align to the University strategy and that these plans are scrutinised, supported and resourced properly. The PRG will provide updates to UEB, Finance Committee and to Council on progress, outcomes and implications from Business Planning. It will monitor the University’s finances and wider business plan performance across all its operations, supported by monthly management information.
Membership of the new PRG will include the Vice-Chancellor, the Vice-Presidents, the Executive Director Finance and Planning, the Chief Operating Officer, with other UEB members attending as required.
The rest of today’s meeting focused on updates on 10-Year Plan projects, and included:
– An overall update on key live projects, their current RAG status, the portfolio funnel , and the 10-Year Plan budget.
– Approval of terms of reference for a new 10-Year Plan Portfolio Access Group – in order to simplify and clarify the process for considering new projects, this group will ensure that only transformational projects with pan-university impact and significant resource requirements are governed by the 10-Year Plan UEB. The Group will also be able to approve modest funding to allow progression of concept papers to full business cases. This should in time clarify those projects which should be considered more as business as usual, and those which have a broader strategic and transformational purpose. In addition, going forward there will be two principal ‘windows’ annually for assessing and prioritising major 10-Year Plan projects, in April and November.
– There was strong support for a concept paper asking for approval to move to business plan stage for a new project to introduce a new Research & Enterprise Awards Management System. We risk lagging behind other universities in not having invested in an overarching enterprise system to cover the entire research lifecycle, from the inception of an idea to the delivery of research outputs. We face an increasingly complex funding landscape, with increased demands from funders and the regulatory environment. We currently rely too much on people-driven processes, email and siloed information systems, as well as on individuals’ knowledge and memory to ensure all necessary steps are taken. That creates considerable risk to the University, and to our £200M annual research economy.
UEB is very alive to the concerns many colleagues share about the need to ensure we transform the way we operate as a University, that we reduce workloads by investing in greater use of technology, that we streamline and simplify our processes more, and that we ensure our technology systems can talk seamlessly to each other. UEB felt this project could be a good exemplar of those aspirations.
– Finally, there was an update on the Placement Management System project, a new web-based student placement system connecting the University and its students with employers and placement providers. The project started in February 2017 and its core phase was completed last month, and will be fully configured over the coming months. UEB believes the new approach has huge potential, and was clear that the new system should be the only permitted way of accessing placements ahead.