At Year End

Late July and August (in the UK) are the times in the higher education academic year when we reach performace review time and we reach financial year-end so there is a good  opportunity to reflect on the previous year and the chance to plan for the forthcoming year.

For everyone working in higher education these days its no longer a glorious long summer of just carrying out research and spending time just thinking.

Many years ago in my first role after my return to the UK, students would leave the University around the end of May and we would not see them again until early October.  I also had a wonderful Chair of department who very graciously allowed that whole period as a mixture of annual leave, technical upgrades and personal research. It was a wonderful time and not something that would be counternanced these days.

So moving forward about 30+ years and clearly things have changed quite a bit. I have over 150 people I'm responsible for and I have to bring home on budget a substantive multi-million pound budget.

Higher education financial year ends (in the UK) on July 31st and of course begins on August 1st. My team and I have to ensure for at least five months before this we are on track and on target in terms of budgets. For the past several all years my combined budgets have come in on-target.

On August 1st new operational budgets get loaded and budgets for continuing and new capital projects become available. Normally there are small increases to take into account such as the cost of living increases and any potential staff awards that are negotiated on a national and local basis. We also ave to budget for any potential changes in su[plier costs. Usually by early September the budgets are all in place and we can financially forecast with some accuracy the forthcoming year.

Getting the capital budgets in place in early August is always an exciting time because it means we can start moving ahead with some key capital programs that are directly linked to process improvement and with a focus on the students experience, which these days is often mis-labeled 'Digital Transformation'.

I am grateful that the largest program and project management team for the University is managed out of IT Services projects & programmes. This means I do have some direct responsibility for the management and delivery of enterprise wide change projects and programs. If I was just managing IT Services it would be a far less interesting role!

We do also have some new major projects & programs including;

User account management.
Render and storage.
Information security and network visibility.
Monitoring and improving performance of IT systems and services.
QL Legacy data centre.
Seamless sign on and multi factor authentication.
Additional Data centre and disaster recovery.

& potentially these as well...

New CRM.
Online Estates: Learning & Teaching.
New E-Recrutiment.
Employe Case Relations System.

....and of course the several ongoing multi-year projects are continuing, including the biggest change management program that the University has ever undertaken the Next Generation Student Systems. This in particular is a massive change for the University since uniformity of approach is one of the key enablers of the new process and this has gone surprisingly well considering the disbursed nature of the University.

Most of all this time of year for me at least is the time to reflect on the previous year and the success and challenges we have encountered.

Evidently sometimes those challenges have been entirely organisational and frustrating and others entirely outside of of our control and external to the University.

The important thing is to think about what we have learnt and how we can do better next time, failure is actually a big part of being successful.

I also personally reflect on life the universe and everything. I realise I have been at the same institution for 4 years and just starting year five, is it good to move fairly regularly?......sometimes yes but sometimes no. If someone would have told me ten years ago I would have the job I have now I would not have believed them.  For the time being I'm happy where I am but I would never not say that I'm not open to interesting opportunities. I do however sometimes grow tired of the lack of life quality and the expense of London and of course Brexit is a continuous worry, but my USA colleagues have I think far more to worry about in regards to domestic politics. I have a long way to go before I retire (still well into double digits) but its important to start to think this far out about where you would like to end up....

I'm also aware that personally I've more to do this coming academic year, I need to get a major print project off the ground and getting some my own prints in some shows. I'm also seriously thinking about setting up my own print studio, but that in turn may make my print works more furtive.

I'm also really enjoying my various sporting activities such as medium distance running, open water swimming, cycling & running.  I'm certainly not at a level where I can 'compete' but I just enjoy the activities, its great to feel good. Making time for others is also key, the older you get the more familiar relationships mean, its important that these are maintained.

Overall though its good to look forwards to a new academic year with some plans a sense of optimism on both a personal and professional level.