Few people see the inner workings of UCL quite like Alan Weston, who has been at UCL for over 32 years.
From moving bags of internal mail in the mid-1990s to overseeing more than 10,000 deliveries and items each week today, Alan Weston has been at the very centre of how the university functions, ensuring that everything, and everyone, keeps moving.
He joined UCL on 18 November 1994 as a porter, following in the footsteps of his brother and the local community. At the time, many of the university’s portering staff lived nearby, with strong ties to Camden and the surrounding areas. What began as a practical opportunity soon became something more.
My brother worked here first, and a lot of people from the local area – Camden and Kentish Town – worked at UCL. I’d just come out of work before Christmas and he said there was a job going as a porter, so I went for it. Over the years, it’s become more than a job.
I’ve worked with some of the same people for over 30 years – one of them I went to nursery school with. You don’t get that everywhere. It’s the people and the atmosphere that make UCL.
When Alan first arrived, UCL ran on paper. Departments relied on the post room to move information across campus, with bags of mail moving between buildings each day.
Today, as Operations and Stores Supervisor in Logistics and Mail Services, Alan’s role reflects a very different kind of institution, one driven by technology and across multiple sites at huge scale.
Alan hasn’t just witnessed these changes but helped enable them. His team supports the infrastructure behind UCL’s most ambitious work: transporting equipment, samples and supplies across campus and beyond, underpinning research and development in ways that are not always visible. From enabling major developments such as the opening of the Student Centre and UCL’s east campus to the recent Quad refurbishments, the Mail Services and Logistics team sits at the centre of how the university operates.
Before we relied on Teams and email, everything moved around the university by post - bags and bags of it. Our work has since changed more towards logistics.
We transport equipment, research materials, everything that keeps the place running. If something new is happening – a new building, a research study – we’re part of it. We’re the ones making sure everything gets where it needs to be.”
The invaluable work of UCL’s logistics staff became clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Alan and his team remained on campus to redistribute laptops and equipment to staff working from home, and to ensure vital research continued uninterrupted.
As UCL has grown, so has the scale of Alan’s work. His team has expanded from around 12 people to 40, reflecting the increasing complexity of the university’s operations and ambitions.
From local beginnings to supporting global research, Alan’s story is a reminder that behind every breakthrough, there is a huge team making it possible. While sometimes unseen, his team plays an integral role in advancing UCL’s work and ambitions.
