Carolyn Donoghue, College Registrar, provides an update on how the College is working to develop its Professional Services infrastructure.

Background

Since the establishment of the College in 2012, we have been working to set up an appropriate infrastructure to deliver professional services within the College, which appropriately support the academic activity. Across the University we are adopting a business partnership model and I am now working with colleagues in central professional services and the other Colleges to define what that looks like for each service at College and School level.

The College of Biomedical and Life Sciences is the largest of the three Colleges with 8,400 enrolled students and 1,900 staff split over multiple sites with the added complexity of Welsh Government, NHS, local health boards and other external stakeholders in health care.  Given this, the focus of the College is to design a support structure that meets the needs of its stakeholders whilst being flexible and responsive to rapidly changing HE and health care sectors.

The Business Partner model is based on developing a good understanding of College and School level needs as well as central university requirements, policies and processes. Broadly we anticipate:

  • Appointing business partners or equivalent;
  • Scoping the service in consultation with staff from School, College and Professional Services;
  • Agreeing where particular processes should be delivered;
  • Designing a structure to support this;
  • Reviewing current structures and making any appropriate changes

Principles

  • To develop consistency where appropriate
  • To establish resilient and sustainable systems and processes
  • To develop clear career pathways and role expectations to support the career development of professional services staff
  • To instil in the College a culture of excellent services and continuous improvement, building on the many areas where this already exists.

Progress to date

Human Resources:

Kim Newcombe our HR Business Partner, sadly left in early May .I am delighted to say that we have recruited Samantha Clark to the post and she will join us on June 9th. We have agreed a structure for HR and will continue to develop this once Sam is in post.

Finance:

Richard Thomas is our Finance Business Partner and we have appointed Jeff White to the post of College Management Accountant.

Information Services:

Clare Davies will be joining us as IT Business Partner in July. A scoping and discovery exercise is about to begin to look at current IT service provision (covering staffing, process and technology) prior to designing an appropriate service model for delivery of IT for the College.

Research Support:

The three College Registrars are working with Research Innovation and Enterprise (RIES) to develop an appropriate Business Partner arrangement. This may not be in exactly the same format as Finance or HR, as the broad remit makes it unlikely that one person could cover all areas.

Planning:

The Planning Department has designated a Senior Planning Officer as the senior point of contact for a particular College. For this College, Lizanne Duckworth has taken on the role.  In addition, the Planning Information and Analysis team within the Planning Department works closely with the Colleges.  The three colleges will work together with Planning and the schools to establish the most appropriate working arrangements.

Communications and Marketing:

We have appointed a Business Partner in Communications. Greg England will take up this post in late August/early September. The University has also just appointed a Director of Communications and Marketing, Claire Sanders who will be starting in June. Once these appointments are in place, the working arrangements and structures can be reviewed and appropriate changes made.

Estates:

Dev Biddlecome, the Director of Estates is currently reviewing the structure and will meet with the three College Registrars to consider how the business partner model principles can be implemented effectively. In addition the College has established an Estates Board, which reports to College Board.

Library services:

The current organisational structure in Library services seems to work very well in relation to College and School structures so we have no current plans to review this.

Student services:

Initial discussions have taken place between the three College Registrars and Chris Turner, Director of Student Services and Governance about implementation of the business partner principles and this will be developed further as soon as possible.

Other recent appointments:

Gabrielle Couch has joined the College team on a secondment until 31st July 2014 – her primary focus is on finance projects.

Joanne Parry was appointed as the College Office Manager from 1 April 2014 and Carina Hibbs, Governance officer – Human Tissue Act also joined the College in April. Carina was previously based in Governance and Compliance, GOVRN.

Development of and appointment to new structures

I would like to give reassurance that structures will be developed over time in consultation with staff from Schools as well as central professional services. Where there are changes to roles these will be managed within HR processes to ensure equity and fairness.

The three Colleges within the University are working to the same principles and liaising closely over changes to ensure that where possible and appropriate consistency is maintained. There are naturally different priorities and complexities in the Colleges so the pace and nature of change may vary.

I hope this clarifies the current position for the College but please do not hesitate to contact me with any queries.