Infrastructure

Estates

• Relocation of SiD desk – Luton campus, larger & more accessible area
• Reviewed Luton & Bedford campuses with Executive Deans, scope out modernisation & refurbishment
• Feedback from conversation cafes – identify new social learning area, Luton Campus Centre

ICT

• Updated teaching room audio capture in 50 teaching rooms
• Programme underway to update ICT infrastructure; network, storage & data centre replacement
• Multifactor authentication (MFA) introduced for staff and now students

MARC

• More than double the number of conditional offers to students compared to last year
• ‘Offer holder’ events led by academic staff
• New campus branding introduced in reception areas – meeting with colleagues, develop subject location branding within faculties

Systems and Processes

• £4m investment in SITS – provide improved student experience; automation – free staff from manual interventions, improve data quality
• SITS programme due to complete in Dec 2023
• Commissioned external review of timetabling system & processes
• Target: provide students timetables 6 weeks before start of teaching
• Academic Registrar and Head of Quality reviewing quality assurance processes
• Target: ensure systems are effective and academic administrative burden is reduced
• Implement Learning Analytics; project group, help identify students at risk & intervene to support them

Planning, Monitoring & Reviewing

• Recruited new Director of Strategic Improvement; looking to recruit team to support the work
• Rolled out subject & course level date to understand performance in delivering APP – includes information on retention, awarding gap
• Introduced new governance structure – centred around delivery of enabling strategies; review in summer
• Board of Governors – complete review of own effectiveness, implementing development plan to embed findings of review

The University’s current IT infrastructure (covering servers, storage and the network) has served the University well for the last 8 years and is reaching the end of life.  The new investment will ensure a modern and sustainable infrastructure, with increased security and recovery protection, that will support the delivery of the Transforming Bedfordshire over the coming years.

Stage one - an investment of over £2m to update the core computer systems, storage, and disaster recovery has now been successfully complete.

Stage two – a further investment of £3.4m is planned in “cloud” backup, further improve our cyber security.  Procurement activity for this stage has commenced and the project will update the core and Wi-Fi networks and will improve both the onsite end-user experience and security.

The Estates investment of over £5m contains of replacements of significant pieces of equipment coming to the end of life, and spend on health & safety and security solutions.  Work completed to date, totals nearly £2.5m, including boiler replacements (at Bedford and  Luton), a programme of window replacements and major roof renewals at Bedford.

Works are to be planned for A Block in Luton, and toilet refurbishments in A and F Blocks in Luton.

For the financial year 2022/23 the University has committed to a capital allocation of £15m.  From December 2021 the Infrastructure Strategy Board will have the task of recommending the allocation and monitoring of all major capital investment.  The Board will help prioritise the allocation of significant project and capital spend across the University, with all major capital investment (e.g. physical estates, IT and technology, and academic equipment) expected to come through the oversight board,  The Board will create a rolling 5-year forecast on capital investments to align with the delivery of the Transforming Bedfordshire strategy. It will be retitled the Infrastructure Delivery and Investment Board [IDIB].

The SITS Change Programme is delivering on the ground improvements in registration (discussed elsewhere in this newsletter) and we’re excited that the next tranche of projects are rolling out to improve our processes and systems around Admissions, Assessments and Student Data Management. 

We met our target to deliver a stable timetable before the start of teaching with 93% of students receiving their personal timetable after registration but we now have to focus on reducing the significant number (752) of late changes to time tables to ensure that students can plan for their studies.  We have introduced a space utilisation project to identify where we are booking rooms that are not then used so that we can free up rooms to provide additional capacity. 

Upcoming plans include work to rationalise our curriculum, our 2020-21 Student Return included 708 Courses with 1651 Units and this presents a significant administrative burden to both registry and academic staff.  Faculties are already engaged in this work and we’ll work together over the next 6 months to ensure an efficient coherent curriculum offer on which we can build future developments.

The Board of Governors has completed the implementation of the outcomes of the review of its effectiveness and the Board actively engaged with the VC and her senior team to deliver Transforming Bedfordshire.