Award Mobilisation (A1)

Implementation of Award Mobilisation – improvements to grant awards set up and continuous improvement 

We are pleased to announce our new University-wide award set up process for all research grant awards is now going live following pilot tests. This has been developed to improve the experience of researchers and Professional Services (PS) teams and to ensure a smoother process from an award being granted through to project set up and launch.  

This innovation has been delivered through the Research Lifecycle Programme which initiated the Award Mobilisation Project in 2023. This project was sponsored by Colette Fagan, the Vice-President for Research and the University’s Research Strategy Group (RSG). The project addressed how the combination of complex and unclear processes and, the pressures of externally driven deadlines were creating an unduly time-consuming and burdensome awards set up process. 

What will Award Mobilisation be offering Researchers? 

12 additional staff have been recruited into Faculty Research Services (RS) and Research Finance (RF) teams. This has improved staffing capacity for both RS and RF to support Award Mobilisation within the RS team. On boarding activities have taken place to embed these new colleagues into their respective teams. 

Each faculty will be implementing improvements incrementally through their Research Services teams during summer 2024. Researchers should start to see improvements at the point a grant has been awarded.

In addition to the extra resources added into faculties, the investment in Research Services and Research finance has enabled us to provide new services to researchers. It is supporting improvements in the transparency of existing processes that researchers need to navigate when they win a new award or request a new contract.  

Key changes are: 

• Awards Mobilisation Plan (AMP) – On winning an award or requesting a new funded research contract, PI’s can expect to receive an awards mobilisation (AMP) plan within five working days. The plan will highlight key T&Cs, all the processes which need to be completed and any gaps in information that need to be addressed to start the project.  
• Proactive Touch Points – Additional proactive touch points have been agreed with senior stakeholders, between the RSO and PI throughout the award set up to discuss ongoing activities. 
• Milestones – The introduction of Milestones in Pure will track award activities and advise PIs when tasks have been completed and by whom. 
• Service Quality Manager – The recruitment of a Service Quality Manager to support service quality monitoring, training, service development, further stage-based reforms, and management of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).  
• Key Performance Indicators – the introduction of two KPIs to improve timescales of activities taking place at award set up. 

Will there be any future projects to improve the Research Lifecycle?  

Yes! The arrival of the Service Quality Manager will inevitably bring change and improvements to the process. Also, the Research Lifecycle Programme is actively working on further projects with the intention of improving things for researchers and professional services. If you are interested in becoming a stakeholder on any futures projects, please email us rlp-projecta@manchester.ac.uk and we can discuss your involvement.  

What is Research and Business Engagement (RBE) doing to support continuous improvement outside of RLP? 

RBE supports the ongoing development of strategy and policy for research, business engagement, and graduate education and works together with faculties and other PS directorates to ensure effective operational support for research and researchers.  

Continual Improvement has been taking place across the department and some highlights are: 

• Business Engagement & Knowledge Exchange (BE&KE) – Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (HEBCIS) – BE&KE have taken over full responsibility for HEBCIS reporting and have made significant improvements to the volume and quality of data captured across a number of HEBCIS metrics, which directly feed into institutional innovation funding. 

Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) Tagging in Pure – Working closely with Research Services, a feature has been added into Pure to tag external organisations as SME companies and Strategic Partner organisations.  

As part of the tagging process, checks were carried out against external data sources to identify and versify SME companies. 1,794 companies have now been tagged in Pure as SMEs. In future, checking and tagging of SMEs in Pure will become part of our business as usual processes in BE&KE in order to maintain correct information in the system. This change will enable us to report more accurately on the number of SMEs we engage with and the type of engagement / collaboration.  

Knowledge Exchange Funding – Through the awarding and administration of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding and Innovate UK KTP funding, the team are continually trying to improve the process for academics, internal colleagues, and external partners. The team have recently developed refreshed guidance related to costing IAA projects in collaboration with RS, to make the project costing as trouble-free as possible. The team have also worked with the Contracts team to embed template contracts as part of the IAA application forms to speed up the contracting process post-award for projects that don’t require contract amendments or negotiations. 

• Contracts Team – As part of the Award Mobilisation project the Contracts Team have been working with colleagues from across Professional Services to ensure agreements are finalised more efficiently and to help support academics to start the work. Tagging users in Pure and keeping relevant staff updated during negotiations will support with transparency.  
• People & Organisational Development (P&OD) – Close collaboration between P&OD and RBE have facilitated the focus on workforce planning and strategic aims such as the research income targets over the next five years, building scenarios to consider the factors involved and thinking deeply about investment in the workforce needed to make that a reality. This positive partnership is building relationships between areas and helping improve understanding of priorities for improved support.  
• Research Ethics – A major update of the Ethics Review Manager (ERM) system was released earlier this academic year, following a consultation exercise and user acceptance testing with the research community. The update utilised new software features to streamline the application form and introduce additional routes tailored to specific types of projects, as well as make improvements to usability to better support the diverse research community. 
• Research Governance – We have re-engineered our sponsor review process with two key objectives: clarifying the scope and reducing duplication and burden for staff and student researchers. To achieve this, we made several changes: 

• Revised Sponsor Review Form: The sponsor review form template has been updated. It now directly connects researchers with university guidance and policy, streamlining the process. 
• Removal of Second Review Stage: Our analysis revealed that the initial review stage contributes that most value. In contrast, the second review stage was primarily limited to ‘checking’. Based on this insight, we have eliminated the second review stage and thereby reduced overall internal review timelines.   
• User Acceptance and Regulatory Approvals: User feedback indicates that the changes are acceptable. Additionally, monitoring of regulatory approvals confirms that there has been no tangible impact on study outcomes.  

Acknowledging concerns raised by researchers regarding lengthy, text-based guidance, we have taken proactive steps to address this issue by developing concise video training modules focused on key areas. Collaborating closely with the FBMH communications and marketing team, we have successfully developed two training videos which are now available on the FBMH YouTube channel. User acceptability will be evaluated, and feedback gathered to inform the future development of similar materials; in line with the University’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) strategy, we are committed to increasing staff and student accessibility to the knowledge base that underpins research governance and ethics processes.

How do I get help and support about this project and any future RLP projects?

To read more about Project A1 Award Mobilisation and read our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), please visit the Research Lifecycle Programme pages. https://www.rlp.manchester.ac.uk/projects/award-mobilisation-a1/.  

For further information please contact rlp-projecta@manchester.ac.uk.