Month: January 2023

The Integrated Planning Process

Posted on by Steve Chadwick

Every organization – particularly large, complex ones like the University of Bristol – needs to plan ahead. The University introduced the Integrated Planning Process (IPP) in 2017 in order to help academic Faculties, Schools and the Professional Service Divisions to plan on a five-year timescale, within the framework of the University Vision and Strategy.

The IPP is built around the notion of an (almost) year-long series of regular, structured conversations between the University’s Senior Management Team – the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) and Provost, the Pro Vice-Chancellors, the Deans and Heads of School, and Professional Services Directors. Staff with specific responsibility for aspects of our many and varied activities (e.g. Faculty Research and Education Directors) are also involved.

Ultimately, the process is designed to assist the Senior Management Team to take good, evidence-based management decisions. Topics within scope of the IPP include issues such as the size and shape of the University’s student population, staff / student ratios, investment in Professional Services support in specific Schools, and space requirements.

What are its key features?

  • It is co-created: a key principle of the process is that plans are co-created by the Senior Management Team. Plans, targets and budgets emerge from an iterative process so they are never merely ‘imposed’ by a small group of individuals. While priorities and constraints are determined at the start of the cycle, Schools, Faculties and Divisions have flexibility within that framework to plan their own activities.
  • It is comprehensive and scalable: the process attempts to cover the majority of the University’s planning and the associated enabling activities (e.g. workforce plans, student number plans, new programme approvals, budget-setting). Plans and budgets are prepared at School, Faculty, Divisional and Institutional level, using standard documents, templates, data and performance metrics.
  • It is evidence-based: a detailed data pack for each School and Faculty informs IPP discussions. The data pack covers student intake and populations, staff workforce plans, research income targets, and a wide range of performance indicators (e.g., REF, NSS, citations, league table performance). Summaries from this pack are used in the meetings. You can find an example from last year’s IPP here.
  • It is integrated: plans cascade not only up and down the management structure, but also across Faculty and Professional Services boundaries. Many colleagues from across the University are involved in the strategic conversation. The process has been designed in such a way that the documentation, templates and data used at Faculty level can be also be used for ‘local’ planning within Faculties.
  • It is iterative: the IPP conversations at Faculty and PS Divisional level occur periodically throughout the academic year through formal meetings to review and refine plans. Faculties have the option to replicate these for their own purposes with Schools.

How is it structured?

The IPP is carefully co-ordinated so that the main and sub-processes align, and decision points are clear. Conversations are usually free-flowing and can cover many aspects of the University Strategy, but the process has distinct phases:

 

  • September/October: Strategy Implementation Board[1] meets for a two-day residential to discuss matters of strategic importance. Key decisions that are taken here (e.g. the future size and shape of the University, financial constraints, ways of working) set the parameters within which Schools and Faculties can develop their own plans.
  • December – March: We then conduct a series of Strategic (SPMs), Faculty (FPMs) and Divisional (DPMs) Planning Meetings during these months. The meetings agree rolling five-year plans for each Faculty, School and Division. This year’s process, for example, plans our activities for the rest of the 2022/23 academic year, and the years to 2026/27.
    • SPMs and FPMs are led by the DVC and Provost; they provide an opportunity to discuss strategic issues for Faculties and Schools aligned to the aims and objectives of the University Strategy (e.g. growth plans, research strategy, workforce plans).
    • DPMs are led by the Registrar and Chief Operating Officer; they consider how resources within Professional Services can best support our academic endeavours and the University’s strategic ambitions.
  • April – May: Plans and budgets are considered, reviewed and approved by University Executive Board, Finance and Infrastructure Committee and the Board of Trustees.

Several key documents inform discussions in the IPP:

  • Strategy Thumbnails: standard templates used by Faculties and Schools to articulate their five-year plans, within the thematic framework of the University Strategy.
  • Data Summaries: extracts from the more detailed data packs mentioned above. Each summary is specifically tailored to inform the agenda for each meeting.
  • Issues/Comments Logs: shared documents where issues of strategic importance can be identified in the run-up to the planning meetings.

The outputs

The key outputs of the IPP are:

  1. agreed academic plans for each Faculty and School;
  2. operational plans for Professional Services Divisions;
  3. budgets and income and expenditure projections covering the next five years.

These detail future activities and investments in staff, buildings and other infrastructure. 

Where to find out more

You can find information about the IPP on this SharePoint site.

Colleagues in the Planning and Business Intelligence Team will also be happy to respond to specific queries. You can email them at ipp-project@bristol.ac.uk.

[1] Strategy Implementation Board is a new University committee. It comprises all members of the University Executive Board, meets once a month, and considers only matters relating to the University Vision and Strategy. These include implementation of the Strategy, monitoring of progress against our objectives using strategic performance indicators, and reporting of that progress to the Board of Trustees.

 

Research culture: enhancing the environment in which research happens

Posted on by Marcus Munafo

This piece was first posted on the Executive Team Blog in April 2022 and appears here with minor edits and updates.

Professor Marcus Munafò

In February 2022, I had the privilege of being appointed Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research Culture. There’s been a great deal of interest in research culture in recent years – from the Royal Society and Wellcome, among others. And last year the UK Government published its Research and Development People and Culture Strategy. But research culture is a difficult concept to define and will mean different things to different people.

It can include how we evaluate and support research, and what we reward, including how we recognise diverse contributions to research and different research career paths. And there isn’t a single research culture: research groups, departments, schools, faculties, institutions and countries – as well as different disciplines – will all have different but overlapping cultures.

So, research culture is complicated; but it’s clearly also important. Those issues of how we evaluate and support research, and what we reward and recognise, impacts on not only our research outputs but also – more importantly – on ourselves as researchers, and our colleagues at all career stages (including the technicians and Professional Services staff who support research activity). A positive research culture, where people feel valued and rewarded, as well as both challenged and supported, is essential if we are to produce high-quality research outputs. It’s also vitally important for attracting and retaining the most talented individuals with values that align with the research culture we aspire to – a vision I’ve been working to co-create with the Bristol community since my appointment.

The creation of a role focused on research culture highlights the importance that we place on getting this right. We were also fortunate that this appointment aligned with the award of funding from Research England to “Enhance Research Culture”, which all institutions in England that receive QR funding received. With input from various parts of the University, we identified projects in four broad areas – Understanding Ourselves, Supporting People, Developing Training, and Enhancing Infrastructure. These map onto the priority areas identified in the Research England Circular Letter, and those highlighted in the early-2022 Enhancing Research Culture meeting.

Examples of the areas we’re investing this funding in range from promoting the uptake of ORCiD IDs and providing open access fees for recent postgraduate students, through to support for emerging initiatives, such as the Inclusive Research Collective – which aims to educate researchers about biased and exclusionary practices in research. We’re also piloting an extension of Bristol’s reciprocal mentoring scheme, which challenges – and to some extent inverts – the traditional power dynamic of conventional mentoring schemes. It will be exciting to see how these projects develop, and we’re keen to ensure that at least some can be sustained beyond the initial funded period.

We were also able to allocate a substantial proportion of this funding to small-scale seed funding, which was open to applications from academic and Professional Services staff at all career stages. This scheme was considerably over-subscribed – testament to the grass-roots enthusiasm for activity in this space. Unfortunately, this meant that we couldn’t fund every proposal, but we were able to fund a number of exciting projects in a range of areas, including several led by postgraduate research students. The hope is that we will be able to secure further funding in the future to support more projects. Until then, this activity will help to foster new and innovative approaches to promoting a positive research culture.

It’s already clear that there’s a great deal of exciting activity across Bristol. Linking that activity together, and supporting it, has been a key part of my new role so far, and we have been able to continue to support some of the projects we funded through the initial round of seed funding, as well as run a second round of funding. Another has been listening to colleagues to better understand what people think we are doing well, what we could do better, and to find out more about what’s already happening. For example, we recently completed a review of research bureaucracy, and will be sharing the results of this shortly.

I remain keen to hear from anyone who’d like to contribute to this process. If you want to talk about research culture, find about more about what we’re planning, and help us improve how we work, do get in touch!