Wednesday 12 November 2008

Cultivating, parking and housing

Busy day today - spent the morning scoring promotion cases. I'm heavily involved with the HR process around promotions and contribution awards and on 3 panels for each. Lots and lots of cases to read and score. Hard work, but I enjoy it - keeps me in touch with what other departments do, and with HR processes and policies.

This afternoon we had a presentation and discussion with Cultivate, a company who assist their clients in the adoption of innovative technologies across their campuses. Some very interesting insights into the issues around technology adoption, particularly the "what's in in for me" syndrome. Some of their outputs were very visual and creative, and would appeal to the non technologists looking for the business slant rather than the the IT one. We will be considering whether we might use them to help us with some of our new projects.

Then we had a Programme Board, looking at progress with our existing projects, proposals for new projects and project closures. Good progress on most projects, but as always some delays due almost totally to resource issues. Only 2 new projects approved - one is a feasibilty study into a pay-on-the-day parking scheme Currently staff pay a yearly fee for a parking permit, no matter how many times they bring their car in. A pay on the day scheme might be fairer to part-time staff and might encourage staff to use their cars more selectively. To walk in on nice sunny days for example. If we had any nice sunny days of course. The other project was a rewrite of our private housing system which allows private landlords to register with us and have their details accessible via a web site which students can search for appropriate properties. Our existing system was written some years ago and could do with updating, but it will have to be prioirtised along with all of the other student related projects we have.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The proposed parking system doesn't sound fair to those whose only reasonable option is to use the car every day when traveling from outside the Sheffield area. I see the situation arising when on inclement weather days the demand for parking spaces outstrips the supply because more local staff decide to drive and I'm disadvantaged due to the lack of a parking space. Will there still be a points based system for allocating parking permits based on need or will it become a free-for-all?

Unknown said...

Hi - thanks for your comment. We're only at the feasibility stage at the moment, so I'll feed it in to the process. I'll post more on the proposals when they're firmer.