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Governance
and General Organisation
The HW-IMRC is managed
by its Management Group (MG), chaired by its Director.
The founding Director was Professor John Simmons
who was succeeded by Professor Julian Jones; both
of whom were obliged to step down upon taking up
Senior Officer roles within the University. The
current Director is Professor Denis Hall. The members
of the Management Group are the Principal Investigators
(PI) of the EPSRC grants which formed the original
portfolio for the IMRC. The Management Group is
supported by an Administrator, Mr David Nisbet who
is also Administrator to the EPS School Management
Group.
The HW-IMRC Management Group is responsible to the
University for ensuring that in all academic respects,
the conditions of the EPSRC grant are complied with.
They are responsible for making decisions on future
projects, reviewing the use of funds so far, developing
and evaluating strategy, managing interfaces and
reporting. Relevant interfaces are with other IMRC
members (investigators, research staff and students)
and other HW-IMRC committees and groups (including
the Steering Committee); the University (management
and administrative structures); internal and external
collaborators, including other IMRCs and industrial
collaborators, and other members of our industrial
networks; and external organisations, such as funding
bodies and learned and societies.
The Management Group has overall responsibility
for the HW-IMRC, but is supported to a considerable
degree by an expert Steering Committee (SC). The
Steering Committee is industrially-led, with predominantly
industrial membership. The current Steering Committee
Chair is Professor Geoff McFarland, Group Engineering
Director of Renishaw plc. The principal role of
the SC is to act as a source of independent guidance
and advice for the Management Group on the development
of the HW-IMRC vision, the alignment of its strategy,
and progress towards its objectives. An essential
element is the provision of advice to the Management
Group on the allocation of funding. All proposals
for funding received by the Management Group are
referred to the Steering Group for comment. Additionally,
the Steering Committee members assist in the identification
of opportunities within the IMRC including research
directions, capital expenditure and human resources
and give advice about how such opportunities can
be identified and exploited. They make suggestions
about synergies inside and outside the University
in manufacturing and non-manufacturing areas. The
specialist interests within the Steering Committee
reflect those of the HW-IMRC as a whole, and hence
its members are well placed to offer guidance to
project groups and individuals about particular
issues concerning for example, management of IP,
technical challenges, business development, and
career development.
The formal remit of the Steering Group is cast very
much in terms of ‘advice’ rather than
executive authority, which is appropriate given
the responsibility of the University to comply with
conditions of grant. However, in practice the Management
Group take the advice of the Steering Group very
seriously, and have taken no significant decisions
without their positive support.
Evaluation
Once funds have been awarded, it is the responsibility
of the Management Group to monitor the progress
of projects. An effort is made to harmonise the
nature of the data collected with those required
in the Schools’ research reviews on inputs
and outputs. ‘Inputs’ include the monitoring
of any support provided as a result of collaborative
arrangements and any other resources attracted by
the work. ‘Outputs’ include academic
publications, commercial developments, KT and personal
development.
The data gathered and analysed by the Management
Group are not restricted to projects or activities
funded by the EPSRC grant. We also consider related
projects whose main content is manufacturing. The
results of the analysis are used for formal purposes,
such as reporting to the EPSRC, and also as a driver
for the development of our strategy.
Project monitoring also involves effective communication
within the IMRC. Here, the Management Group is responsible
for organising informal events to allow effective
dissemination between all IMRC members.
Development of the Research
Portfolio - Use of Roadmap Analysis
An important vehicle for the development of the
HW-IMRC research portfolio has been the structured
use of ‘Roadmapping’ techniques. These
were introduced by the Strategy Group and implemented
by the overall HW-IMRC team in partnership with
the Steering Committee, members of our industrial
partner cohort and invited experts from our national/international
networks. This process gathered pace during the
final 6 months of Phase 1, to help us produce challenging
and relevant research plans for the second 5-year
(Phase lI) tranche of EPSRC funding which commenced
in April 2008. To assist us in this process, we
engaged an external consultant (Mr Iain Ross) who
is an expert in roadmapping processes and has many
years of relevant research and industrial development
experience. To inform our deliberations, we made
copious use of up-to-date foresighting documents
from UK and EU organisations, including documents
from the European Technology Programmes (ETP) ‘Manufutures’
and ‘Photonics21’. During the final
6 months of 2007, we ran a series of workshops –
including two with active contributions from a good
selection of our external advisors. In addition
several members of the HW-IMRC team played an active
role in the workshops organised under the auspices
of each of these ETPs. Through several drafts, we
produced a final version of the HW-IMRC strategic
Research Roadmap around the beginning of 2008.
The development of research plans for the Phase
2 projects were conceived, developed and are being
implemented in light of the directions which the
Roadmaps for each of the three themes have helped
us to define. We continue to refer to – and
to update -the Roadmaps on a theme-by-theme basis
along with the trends defined by market demands
and technical opportunities. Most recently, in November
2009, we devoted the whole of our Steering Committee
Meeting to a detailed evaluation of progress achieved
on each of our Phase 2 projects, following the ‘rolling
update’ of our Roadmaps. The lively interaction
which occurred proved to be extremely valuable to
our researchers. This dynamic process of challenging
ourselves against the market-relevant views and
the broad experience of our Steering Committee was
repeated at the March 2010 meeting, during which
we outlined and justified our future research plans
for the period 2010-2013 and beyond. |
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