UCL Consultants' turnover rises 18%

These are some of the recent projects undertaken by UCL Consultants. We provide the link between academics who are interested in doing consultancy work and governments, companies and organisations who want to access our expertise.

We are proud to have become one of the UK's leading providers of academic consultancy services thanks to the enthusiasm and support of UCL academics who provide world-class expertise across a wide range of disciplines.

Our clients have included the Scottish government, Dunlop Tyres, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service. We launched in 2003 and now work with over 1,200 academics and researchers.

Consultancy projects can increase the impact of UCL's research, broaden opportunities for knowledge exchange, raise personal and UCL profiles, build relationships and generate income. In 2014/2015, UCLC returned £5.4 million to UCL departments, up 17 percent on the previous year, and over £2.6 million to individual academics. Turnover for the year ended 31 July 2015 was £10.1 million, up 18% from the previous year.

Led by Roger de Montfort, who joined as managing director in 2013 from professional services firm PwC, the organisation has taken a more proactive approach in looking for opportunities to capitalise on the university's world class academic expertise, develop partnerships and increase the income generated for UCL departments and individuals.

In addition to academic consultancy, we support expert witness advice, including patent disputes and forensic services, testing and analysis using UCL's laboratories and facilities, and bespoke training and short courses, on which UCLC works closely with the UCL Life Learning team.

A growing focus of work is project consultancy, where UCLC helps draw together multidisciplinary teams of experts to bring together the best solution to solve clients' complex problems. We work closely with colleagues across UCL to align our strategy with the wider UCL Research, Enterprise and Global Engagement strategies which underpin the UCL 2034 vision and strategy.

UCLC provides the full lifecycle of costing and pricing, proposal preparation, contracting, project management and finance services to make it easy and rewarding for academics to undertake consultancy. They benefit from our commercial expertise, understanding of market rates, opportunity identification and support, experience in risk management, and our professional indemnity insurance.

We employ a team of four consultancy managers who are embedded in faculties to identify consultancy opportunities, help create cohesive teams and market service offerings, and support the preparation of bids for consultancy projects. We can add most value when we are involved from the beginning of an opportunity so we encourage academics to contact us early.

For further information on UCLC and our services, please see our website www.uclconsultants.com or contact us on info@uclconsultants.com