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UCL Career Frameworks

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General Workshop & Laboratory Services - Grade 6

Example job roles: Workshop Technician, Research Technician, Store Assistant, Laboratory Technician, Junior AIT Engineer

Level: Developing/Skilled 

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
  • Working with the faculty manager, establish and maintain a safe/compliant working environment
  • Assist/complete and update routine safety paperwork (dependant on the risk owner)
  • Hold specific safety responsibilities
  • Organise and complete compliance tasks (role/department dependent)
  • 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/workshop manager with the day-to-day running and supervision of laboratory spaces
  • Allocate work to one or more members of technical staff (this may be dependent on the area of work and/or the role) 
  • Work collaboratively to deliver objectives 
  • Contribute to progress and management meetings
  • Assist with record keeping, inventory and asset management 
  • Manage a small budget, monitoring resource usage and maintaining supplies of key items (this may be dependent on the area of work and/or the role)
  • Assist with stores operations including ordering, receiving, processing, and distributing goods
  • Source and negotiate with suppliers for routine items
  • Provide a high standard of research support, including contributing to reports and publications
  • Provide a high standard of teaching support, including preparing for classes and field work
  • 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 using a pre-existing framework or costing scheme and assist with re-charging (in some areas, this may involve TRAC costing)
  • Update and deliver local inductions
  • Provide training and demonstrations of techniques and equipment
  • Share skills and best practice
  • Prepare standard operating procedures and work instructions for methods and/or equipment 

Personal and professional development

Development options to consider when working towards this level

Learning on the job

  • Specialise in specific areas of responsibilities e.g. to be a point of contact for specific instruments and tools
  •  Broaden knowledge of different materials, machinery and processes
  • Coordinate access to resources and facilities for stakeholders
  • Develop the ability to use personal initiative to work proactively 
  • Gain additional experience and be able to provide evidence of completed projects
  • Develop people skills to interact with staff, students, academics.
  • Complete the manufacturing of parts that require a specialist apprenticeship to achieve the tolerances required (post- successful apprenticeship)

Learning from others  

  • Increase knowledge to aid troubleshooting processes e.g., include sample preparation and analysis of data; common CAD software issues
  • Work shadow other colleagues to learn how to carry out risk assessments
  • Join a Community of Practice
  • Access mentoring support from a colleague or local mentoring scheme

Formal learning

  • UCL RiskNet training
  • Fire Warden training
  • Relevant training through Higher Education and Technician Educational Development (HEaTED)

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

Writing and reporting

  • Writing correctly
  • Writing clearly and fluently
  • Writing in an expressive and engaging style
  • Targeting communication

Developing results and setting customer expectations

  • Focusing on customer needs and satisfaction
  • Setting high standards for quality
  • Monitoring and maintaining quality
  • Working systematically
  • Managing quality processes
  • Maintaining productivity levels
  • Driving projects to success

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

4 January 2024

Career Pathway roles are indicative and are not intended to be a description of the role in terms of responsibilty and duties.