Project board
A project board has been established to oversee this process – chaired a member of the SOAS Board of Trustees, Steve Tinton. Steve has been on the SOAS governing body since 2012 having various roles as interim vice chair, chair of the audit committee and now chairing the Estates Committee. His personal background is in professional services and risk assessment. He has been a member of various boards in the NHS, the private sector and with the World Health Organisation.
The Board includes members of our staff and our student community – with representatives from UNISON and the SOAS Students’ Union. Reporting to the SOAS Executive Board, as a project board the goal is to make sure self-delivery of services happens – to make sure that the necessary decisions, plans and processes get taken forward effectively over the coming year.
The board will look at activities across a number of work streams to understand the complex nature of each service, examine tasks more deeply and ensure wide consultation. Those workstreams cover the main activities undertaken across:
- catering and hospitality;
- security;
- cleaning;
- mechanical and electrical maintenance;
- logistics and porterage;
- reception; and
- helpdesk.
For each of these workstreams the project will engage with colleagues working in each of these areas to ensure that we can successfully achieve the September 2018 target for transfer of services. The Project Board is confident that this collaborative approach will help develop a genuine understanding of the needs and priorities for each workstream. Professional service teams across IT, HR, Finance and so on will be involved to provide support for this work.
Project management will be through the estates team led by Rychard Scrase Field and Siobhan Canavan to ensure consistency and commonality across all the project work going forward.
Project Initiation Document
The Project Initiation Document (PID) is the formal document which is set and kept up to date by the project board as the project develops to describe in detail the goals and the project and how it will operate. It is available here for openness and completeness, but please note it is detailed and not designed as a way of providing straightforward information about the project.