Case Study 9 - The Bartlett, UCL Faculty of the Built Environment

You said: 

The staff survey revealed particular concerns around the fairness of professional services grading and academic promotions processes, working hours and the physical working environment. 

We did: 

We have offered workshops to academic staff on the promotion process along with one-to-one advice and guidance with the Dean and other senior members of staff who have served on the promotions committees in the past.  A workshop offered to professional services staff in July 2015 to explain the HERA job evaluation scheme and UCL’s grading and regarding processes was attended by almost all such staff.  This followed on from a project run across BEAMS to establish a suite of generic job descriptions that have helped staff to develop a greater understanding of the different grades within ‘job families’.  The BEAMS project will be expanded to include further ‘job families’ in the coming year.

The Faculty has made significant improvements to its physical estate in the last two years, including commencing a major refurbishment and extension project on 22 Gordon Street (and fitting out 132 and 140 Hampstead Road for what has been as a highly successful and experimental temporary space) along with the fit out of four further floors of Central House.  This is part of a longer term plan which has so far seen the Faculty double its space over the last five years and will include over the next 18 months both the return to Gordon Street and the establishment of a new site at Here East on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for long awaited new activities requiring large warehouse-type space.

We have increased the ratio of professional services to academic staff, thereby relieving academics of administrative work and allowing them to focus on teaching and research; restructured professional services teams and increased professional services staff numbers to better deliver specialist services and brought together two school professional services teams to create efficiencies.  We have reorganized the committee structures to streamline and better align to UCL Centre those areas where academic judgment is required.  We have also reduced SSR, reducing the load on teaching to allow a rebalance towards research which plays an important part in academic staff promotion.  Finally, we have supported a move towards research-based education so that staff research interests and efforts are more closely aligned with their roles in research and enterprise.