Thursday 14th March
Today, it was Chris’s turn to shadow me. I had a couple of meetings in my diary and was hoping that they would give Chris some insight into how the machinery supporting the University operates.
We started in the Estates office in the Agriculture building. This is a ‘smart working’ environment, which doesn’t mean we all have to dress up in suits but rather that we work in environments suitable for what we are doing at any given time. We don’t have our own desks so Chris and I sat down at two desks together and Chris was able to log into his University account. This allowed me time to catch up with emails without feeling that I had to ‘nursemaid’ Chris, as he was able to get on with similar work. It was also a chance to share particular issues that I thought Chris would be interested in. Looking through the student survey of the campus that we are going to run in May, Chris offered a couple of good suggestions to help us draw out the information that we are seeking from the survey.
Our first meeting was with my colleague Az Mohammed from ISS to look at the functional suitability study I’d been doing on computer cluster rooms across campus. We were exploring the school owned rooms and how the provision and student experience in these compared to those that are centrally supported. I’d explained some of the space ownership issues to Chris earlier and I think at this point he started to realise that the University was a more a complex structure than a simple two dimensional one.
As a member of the PG student staff committee in the School of English, Chris did bring along a number of questions relating the process of requesting and actioning changes to a building, i.e. converting a store room into an office. Deviating a little from the shadowing plan, I arranged for Chris to meet up with Carol Young, the HASS faculty co-ordinator. Carol and her counterparts in SAGE and FMED provide a vital link between the Schools and Institutions with Estates.
Our afternoon meeting was with the Sage Faculty Estates committee which is chaired by Steve Smith, the Sage Faculty Estates co-ordinator. It provides the opportunity for representatives from the SAGE schools to discuss particular estate and building issues with the relevant ESS manager. I think Chris found this a very enlightening meeting, although it must have been a lot to take in at once. The agenda can jump from noise issues from building works to how to access offices to clean windows, to why the revolving doors to the Herschel building won’t stop revolving, and how can we encourage classes to reset the tables and seating ready for the next students.
I hope Chris enjoyed his day in the life of the Estates office and that he got a small taster of the work we do. I certainly enjoyed my time with him and the chance to look at the campus from a post graduate perspective.