Dear colleague,

On behalf of Richard Wade please note the latest news from STFC's Operations Board (plus FYI, membership of the Board):

On 5 June the Operations Board met for its second meeting. There were further discussions around its relationships with other groups. The Finance Committee had amended their Terms of Reference (ToR) and, once the Strategy Board had met on Monday and finalised their ToR, Operations Board would re-evaluate their own to ensure that the three bodies (plus the Executive Board) work properly together. The meeting structure was also discussed, together with how to ensure important items such as risk, safety etc are reported throughout the year.

Richard Wade produced a paper setting out how he expected information to flow into and from this group and throughout the organisation in general. One important aspect of this is to ensure that line management has a key role to play in the cascade of information. After some further iteration Richard will publish a guidance note for managers.

DIUS is planning to introduce organisational reviews as part of it's assessment of their delivery partners. STFC have volunteered to pilot such a review and will initially undertake a self assessment of our procedures and on-going performance. This will help to evaluate the impact of changes we have made, and are implementing, and help us identify where we need to do more to further strengthen the STFC. Operations Board agreed that this was an important and valuable initiative. With this in mind this group will oversee the process and act as the Project Board for the STFC review.

Concern was expressed that STFC may be missing opportunities because it is unclear who the key contacts are for specific areas e.g. energy, defence, and climate change. John Womersley's directorate has been working to identify these people and he will circulate the current status to the Operations Board.

STFC and EPSRC have shared their submissions to the Wakeham Review, in preparation for the panel meetings which are taking place towards the end of this month. STFC and EPSRC will publish their submissions once both CEOs have met with the panel. Operations Board recognised that a lot of work had taken place for this, but felt that it was important for further discussion involving the CEO before the Review panel meeting. The next Executive Board will devote a significant amount of time to this.

A report on safety was given to the group with a message to encourage near miss reporting. There is a plan to have a discussion around environmental issues at a later meeting.

A strategy for ICT was approved by the group.

Finance reporting was discussed and it was agreed that Operations Board was best placed to be involved in the working up of the outturn and making decisions regarding variances. Jeff Down (Director, Finance) will provide a paper at each meeting setting out the overall position with a single line for each area. It will then be Finance Committee's role to digest and approve high level reports of the outturn. Recognising that there are issues with the Capital Plan, the Operations Board will discuss these in the near future. Equally, the Operations Board will be the forum to discuss the 10 Year Plan.

Richard Wade
Chief Operating Officer