*A message from the Chief Operating Officer, Richard Middleton*
Dear colleagues
We are currently preparing our campuses and residences to be ready for the start of the new academic year in September, with COVID-secure measures in place. To ensure that we are capturing and managing all of the complexities involved, I have created the Active Campus Group, composed of the Executive Directors of Professional Services. This team meets twice per week to maintain strategic oversight of preparations.
The safety and wellbeing of our staff and students will always be our top priority – we will at the very minimum always adhere to the prevailing Government public health guidelines; in some instances we will introduce our own additional measures if we feel they are appropriate to ensure safety and ease of compliance, and we have already introduced a requirement for risk assessments for returning to work on campus, for any reason.
We will have a range of risk minimisation measures in place such as physical distancing, required use of face coverings, cleaning, self-cleaning of work areas and directional signage. These measures will also include significantly limiting the numbers of staff and students on campus at any one time, in part by limiting attendance to those times when physical presence is required, to ensure a safe campus environment and to limit numbers at key pinch-point interchanges. Details of all of these measures will be provided in our new weekly email – Staff Digest – as well as via SUSSED, Staff Matters and in Manager Briefing sheets.
Our planning will include a blended learning approach to education, combining face-to-face and online engagement, together with a short-term expansion of teaching space availability through use of temporary buildings, which adds to the need for careful planning.
With around 20,000 students and 6,000 staff our community is similar in scale to a small town, so we will need a very carefully phased return to operation over the first 3 months, to allow us to continually assess, and if necessary, revise the measures we are putting in place.
We also need to assume that there could potentially be periods of short-term lockdown ahead on a regional or national basis over the autumn and winter, so from a wellbeing and operational perspective it would be unwise to bring too many staff back too soon.
Our approach between now and Christmas is likely to be:
- We will need to have a clear prioritisation of returning staff, focused first on those supporting our University infrastructure, those working in laboratories, those providing face-to-face teaching, those providing face-to-face support to students, those who cannot work from home for other reasons – all subject to a risk assessment and case for return.
- Our current Partial opening of campus and working from home guidance documents found on the Health and Safety website are being updated for the next period from 1 August to 28 September.
- As we approach the start of the new academic year we will be expecting certain members of staff to return to work on campus in order to fulfil their roles effectively.
- Equally, we will be expecting a considerable number of our staff NOT to return to campus, and to continue working from home, to ensure the safest possible campus environment for those who do need to be there.
- Teaching and research staff will need to be on campus at certain times for face-to-face teaching or lab-based research, but to minimise numbers on campus at any one time should otherwise work from home when a campus presence is not required.
- Professional Services staff will return to campus in order to provide services to students and other staff which can only be carried out on campus. For all other PS staff, the assumption will be that they will continue to work from home for the time being to ensure that those who need to work on campus can do so in the safest possible way.
- We will use the autumn months to assess how everything is working and to explore how we might be able to get larger groups of staff back from January where necessary, carefully considering how we would provide a greater degree of interaction.
We are making good progress in managing the phased re-opening of our buildings. With more than 100 buildings, each with different uses and configurations, this is highly complex. Thirty-two of our buildings, including many of our laboratories are already back in some degree of operation, and I expect this to have increased to 48 by the end of July as work continues to prepare for the safe return of staff and students.
So that academic colleagues can continue to develop their online teaching materials, we have enabled a number of rooms within Building 100 with audio visual recording facilities, which are ready to be used. Please seek approval from your Faculty or Department lead and once this is in place, bookings can be made through Timetabling. Faculty Operating Service (FOS) teams in the Schools can assist with these requests.
I realise that there are still many unanswered questions at this stage. We are working quickly and thoughtfully to provide the best decisions we can, based on the information available in the context of government guidance.
The operation is complex and challenging. We are, however, well prepared. I will continue to provide you with updates regularly over the coming weeks. Thank you all for your support in helping the University prepare for the Autumn term and new academic year.
Best wishes
Richard Middleton
Chief Operating Officer
