![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2019\/04\/UEB-April-2019.fw_.png\")
<\/p>\nAuthor: Shaun Williams, Executive Director of Engagement and Advancement<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s UEB meeting was one of the monthly dedicated 10-Year Plan UEB meetings, which are chaired by Professor Mandy Fader in her capacity as Pro Vice-Chancellor for the 10-Year Plan. These meetings are focused on monitoring and driving progress on our transformational 10-Year Plan projects, as well as considering concept papers and business cases for potential new projects.<\/p>\n
Each stage of the process is in effect a \u2019gateway\u2019: at each stage an informed decision is made about whether to progress a project idea further, based on its alignment with the University Strategy, and its affordability. Some ideas are paused or rejected at initial concept phase; some can be at business case stage. So, a green light at concept stage simply means that permission has been given to progress to a full business case, where a similar \u2019gateway\u2019 go\/no go approach is taken.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The challenge, of course, is that although we have no shortage of smart and transformational proposals around at the moment, the ability to fund and resource them all is very limited, and we know from experience that taking on too much simultaneous change can be hard for us to deliver successfully, and can put huge pressure on particular teams who have to be involved in every project. We face a big issue around prioritisation.<\/p>\n
So a busy agenda today including four different transformation project concept papers, each requesting initial resources to progress the ideas towards a more developed, evidence-based business case. These included:<\/p>\n
So in all five cases, limited resource will be provided from the 10-Year Plan budget to progress these concepts to more developed, and evidenced, business cases. We can expect to hear more on each in a few months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n
Each month, in the \u2019Driving and Monitoring the Portfolio\u2019, section of the agenda, there is a rotated update on live projects and work-streams, usually given by the Programme or Project Sponsor.<\/p>\n
This week, there was an update by John Kness, Director of Faculty Operations, on the FOS – Optimising support for Faculties<\/strong> project, which is focusing on how we can ensure optimum and equitable provision of service across the University, following the recent faculty restructure.<\/p>\n Then an update from me on the Engagement<\/strong> workstream, which includes three 10-Year Plan Projects \u2013 OneWeb<\/strong>; the Campaign for ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ<\/strong>, our future \u00a3100m fundraising campaign; and an emerging project around our brand and reputation: University Global Brand<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Finally, an update from Professor Rachel Mills, who chairs the Estates Programmes Board<\/strong>. The formerly separate Capital Programmes Board has now been brought into the governance framework of the 10-Year Plan to ensure that all our transformational projects can be considered together.<\/p>\n