Improving award set up processes for queries

In partnership with UCL’s Continuous Improvement team we ran 5 initial workshops last year with representatives from RIS and several faculties (Arts and Humanities, The Bartlett, Institute of Education, Life Sciences and Social and Historical Sciences) to look at ways to improve the award set up process. The workshops were highly informative and generated a number of solutions, including a redesigned ‘to-be’ process for award set up. 

One of the early solutions identified was to improve the flow of communication and information between RIS, academic colleagues, and professional services teams based in faculties.

To reduce the amount of time taken to respond to queries and requests for support, colleagues in faculties and departments are asked to raise project-specific queries with your departmental contact in Worktribe as a first preference.

If you are unsure about how to use the ‘Comments’ tab in Worktribe, you will find instructions on our Communicating in Worktribe page. If this isn’t possible or appropriate, please include the relevant project(s) and/or contract(s) details when contacting our Award and Contract Services teams by email, as shown below:   

• @Application Stage: ‘WT 1234567’
  Composed of the Work Tribe Project ID
• @Award Set Up: ‘WT 1234567/CID 1234567’ 
  Composed of the Work Tribe Project ID + the Contract ID
• @Project Live: ‘WT 1234567/Project Code 123456’
  Composed of the Work Tribe Project ID + Finance Project Code

In the longer term, the redesigned ‘to-be’ process aims to generate several benefits, including:

• Reducing the number of process steps by 50%
• Resolving 44% of the pain points identified in the current process
• Clarifying process tasks and responsibilities
• Making the progress of a project through the process visible to all users. 

Our next steps are to validate these expected benefits through user testing and a live pilot, before rolling out across the university, which we will deliver in continued partnership with the Continuous Improvement team and faculty representatives (as nominated by the Directors of Operations and their leadership teams).