Education - Grade 6

Experiences

Activities and responsibilities likely to be required when working at this level

Health & Safety responsibilities

• Complete routine equipment maintenance and repairs
• Liaise with suppliers and manufacturers to resolve simple problems
• Advise on equipment capabilities
• With the academic lead, establish and maintain a safe/compliant working environment
• Assist/complete and update routine safety paperwork (dependant on the risk owner)
• Hold specific safety responsibilities relevant to the area of work
• Organise and complete compliance tasks
• Maintain up-to-date health and safety knowledge, providing support and advice to others

Core responsibilities

• Ensure effective delivery of objectives by planning and managing own workload
• Assist the academic lead with the day-to-day running and supervision of laboratory spaces
• Allocate work to one or more members of technical staff
• Work collaboratively to deliver objectives 
• Contribute to progress and management meetings 
• Manage a small budget, monitoring resource usage and maintaining supplies of key items
• Assist with stores operations including ordering, receiving, processing, and distributing goods
• Source and negotiate with suppliers for routine items
• Provide a high standard of teaching support, including preparing for classes and field work
• Provide support to students through tuition
• Prepare and deliver tutorials to students 
• Support taught course projects by contributing to experimental design and data acquisition
• Prepare and manufacture a range of simple specimens/samples
• Report infrastructure faults and support small-scale building works
• Manage equipment bookings, calculate charges/costs, and assist with re-charging
• Update and deliver local inductions
• Provide training and demonstrations of techniques and equipment
• Take responsibility for the successful delivery of assigned laboratory classes 
• Share skills and best practice
• Manage arising issues with a solution-focused attitude
• Manage the maintenance of machinery and equipment as required
• Contribute to risk assessments
• Write standard operating procedures
• Manage the Laboratory Efficient Assessment Framework (LEAF) award application

Personal and professional development

Development options to consider when working towards this level

Learning on the job

• Provide detailed written and verbal feedback to students 
• Explore opportunities to take on acting-up duties

Learning from others  

• Join special interest groups, and/or network groups to learn about best practice in other areas of UCL, as well as external groups to learn about other organisations and sectors
• Join a Community of Practice 
• Attend conferences
• Develop understanding of people and lab management by shadowing and covering for senior technicians

Formal learning

• Attend Health and safety training
• Relevant training through Higher Education and Technician Educational Development (HEaTED)
• Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy – Advance HE via UCL Arena Centre
• Specialist instrument training as required
• Apply for training through a mid-career apprenticeship programme
• Accreditation/certification from a recognised professional body

Transferable skills and competencies

UCL uses the Universal Competency Framework (UCF) to discuss transferable skills. Find out more details on the framework.

Applying expertise and technology

• Applying technical expertise
• Building technical expertise
• Sharing expertise
• Using technology resources
• Demonstrating physical and manual skills
• Demonstrating cross-functional awareness
• Demonstrating spatial awareness.

Working with people

• Understanding others
• Adapting to the team
• Building team spirit
• Recognising and rewarding contributions
• Listening
• Consulting others
• Communicating proactively
• Showing tolerance and consideration
• Showing empathy
• Supporting others
• Caring for others
• Developing and communicating self-knowledge and insight

Presenting and communicating information

• Speaking fluently
• Explaining concepts and opinions
• Articulating key points of an argument. Presenting and public speaking
• Projecting credibility
• Responding to an audience

UCL Ways of Working

These describe expected behaviours in line with UCL culture and values.  For Ways of Working indicators and steps to development please refer to the Ways of Working website.