Universities UK (UUK) 4th Annual Efficiency in Higher Education Conference talk from me and UCL's Jacky Pallas on accelerating equipment sharing. This covers Jisc initiatives such as our shared data centre and VAT cost sharing group, and our pilot of the Kit-Catalogue equipment database software - with a case study from UCL showing how they have used Kit-Catalogue.

1. Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
4th Annual UUK Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Photo credit: The Lighting Simulator, UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton
Universities UK 4th Annual Efficiency Conference, March 2015

2. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton

3. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton

4. :: About Jisc ::What we do
» Registered charity championing the use of digital technologies in
research and education
» Range of shared services for UK Universities and Colleges, e.g.
- Janet, world leading research network
- eduroam global wireless roaming
- Groundbreaking content deals with publishers
- Cloud brokerage with Amazon, Google, Microsoft
» Aiming to complement RCUK and Innovate UK / Catapults
- Open Educational Resources, Open Access and Open Data
- Just launched asset sharing initiative

5. :: About Jisc ::Value proposition
Generating £260m
savings per annum
e.g. KnowledgeBase+
- £4.5m

6. :: About Jisc ::Value proposition
Generating £260m
savings per annum
e.g. DigiMap - £40m

7. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton

8. ::Why Asset Sharing? :: What are we doing?
» Leveraging public investment in the Janet network
– Connecting industry: http://www.ja.net/janet-reach
– Where next - e.g. 10Gbit/s links to Science Parks?
– Testbeds for new technologies, e.g. UHD streaming fromTokyo
Olympics, Surrey 5G testbed, Catapult centres
» Where else can we add value?
– Exploit our cost sharing group (256 institutions, 93% of HEIs)
– Research clusters, e.g. Jisc shared data centre with Sanger,Crick, UCL,
King’s College,QMUL, LSE etc: http://www.ja.net/data-centre
– AnticipatingAusterity 2.0 efficiency savings

9. » £900K HEFCE investment
» Anchor tenants: Crick, KCL,
LSE, QMUL, Sanger, UCL
» First data hall now full
::Why Asset Sharing? :: Shared data centre

10. See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/research/projects/equipment-sharing
::Why Asset Sharing? :: HPC use case
Image credit:CC BY-NC-ND HPC Midlands
» Brokering access to £60m public investment in HPC

11. ::Why Asset Sharing? :: What’s next
» Reducing sharing friction between institutions & with industry
– Sample use case: model 1,000 5G antenna designs via HPC
– Then build first physical prototype and wind tunnel test
– Relies on combination of facilities and expertise
» How can we do this?
– Standardized terms and conditions
– Trialling this approach right now with HPC brokerage
– Equipment sharing database “as a service” to aid matchmaking.
» What would a one stop shop for asset sharing look like?

12. ::Why Asset Sharing? :: What’s next
» Reducing sharing friction between institutions & with industry
– Sample use case: model 1,000 5G antenna designs via HPC
– Then build first physical prototype and wind tunnel test
– Relies on combination of facilities and expertise
» How can we do this?
– Standardized terms and conditions
– Trialling this approach right now with HPC brokerage
– Equipment sharing database “as a service” to aid matchmaking.
» What would a one stop shop for asset sharing look like?

13. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton

14. :: Kit-Catalogue Pilot ::
See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/research/projects/equipment-sharing

15. :: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Participating Institutions

16. :: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Institutional commitment
» Members of the pilot will be:
› Committing resource to ensure significant proportion of
high value equipment recorded in Kit-Catalogue
– e.g. items costing £25K or above
› Making all (or a meaningful subset) of catalogue records
available as publicly available information
– For harvesting by the national http://equipment.data.ac.uk portal
› Contributing material towards a case study of their use of
Kit-Catalogue

17. :: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Institutional benefits
» Members of the pilot will be able to:
› Influence product development through the Kit-Catalogue
user group
› Provide feedback on their experiences of Kit-Catalogue
– To help inform a future decision about whether Jisc should offer
Kit-Catalogue as a national service
› Contribute to a wider strategic discussion around facilitating
equipment sharing between institutions and with industry

18. Research Equipment Sharing
and UCL Research Equipment Catalogue
Universities UK
4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference
25th March 2015
Jacky Pallas
j.pallas@ucl.ac.uk @uclplatforms

19. Topics
• UCL Research Equipment Catalogue
• Communications and showcasing facilities
• Capturing data about equipment sharing
• Some examples of sharing

20. UCL’s Equipment Catalogue
• Now live at research-equipment.ucl.ac.uk
• Contains ~90% of UCL’s equipment >£25k
• Powered by Kit-Catalogue software
• Departmental Administrators are
configured to maintain records

21. Data Collection: iPad app
• Used FormConnect iPad app
to collect data when escorted
around labs.
• Can export data as .csv, .pdf,
.xml, and .html formats.
• We converted .csv files from
the app to the Kit-Catalogue
import format for upload.

22. 1700 items
catalogued
502 publicly
visible

23. Item listing
screenshot:

24. Communications Strategy
Two key groups of users identified: ‘Finders’ and ‘Keepers’
Finders
Researchers who will
browse the catalogue
Keepers
Equipment owners and
departmental admins
Mailings targeted to each group. Posters, accompanying web site, user
guides and FAQs produced. Promotion at internal events.
Administrators configured from each department.

25. Positive user feedback
1490 visitors; ~17,000 page views; avg. visit 4 mins 15 secs
Tracking item enquiries; dedicated email inbox, 72 queries since Aug 2014
“No problems encountered.
Seems clean, intuitive and
well-constructed.”
72 items updated since Aug 2014
119 department administrators with
edit permissions

26. Showcasing UCL facilities
Science & Engineering South (SES)
Consortium
Exploit collected catalogue data:
Promote and professionalise our research facilities.
Other HEIs,
SMEs & Industry
Shared searchable
database of equipment
across SES
UCL public data in
equipment.data.ac.uk
Promote facilities through
London Life Science and
Open-SME
Work with UCL Enterprise
to professionalise
offerings.

27. Capturing equipment sharing - efficiently
• Working with Faculty finance and research
services teams, dept. and facility managers
• Annual financial review of research facilities
– TRAC listing and charge-out rates
• Implemented new data collection process –
income, estimated usage for
– Internal and external academic users (R)
– Teaching (T)
– Industry and gov’t agency (OSR)

28. Equipment and facilities sharing - data
• 29% of facilities provide services to industry or
gov’t agencies, with 5.4% of total income of all
UCL TRAC facilities
• 41% of facilities offer services to external
academic groups, with 7.4% of income
• Next step – calculate the value of the equipment
available for sharing through our facilities

29. Collaboration – examples in large scale
computing
• Centre for Innovation, EPSRC £2.8M, UCL, Oxford,
So’ton, Bristol
• Farr London, MRC £5M, UCL, QMUL, LSHTM, Public
Health England
• Admin Data Research Centre England, ESRC £6.8M,
So’ton, UCL, IoE, IFS
• eMedLab, MRC £8.9M, UCL, QMUL, LSHTM, Crick,
Sanger, EBI
• Farr, ADRN, Med. Bioinf : 18 HEIs working together on
SafeShare, JISC-funded project for secure data transfer

30. Visit:
www.research-equipment.ucl.ac.uk
www.ucl.ac.uk/platforms
Contact us:
research-equipment@ucl.ac.uk
@uclplatforms
Research Platforms Coordinator post
available – see UCL Jobs ref. 1452534

31. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton

32. :: Discussion :: Blockers part 1
» “Time”
» “The sense the equipment is
'owned' by a research group is
still present. This is reducing
with new equipment, but
current/old equipment is still
seen as 'mine’”
» “No transparent system to see
the availability/capacity of
equipment”
» “Researchers (understandably)
choose the easiest option - so
they use the equipment which
is closest to them, as opposed
to most appropriate for their
experiment”
» “A lack of staff willing to
support initiatives like Kit-
Catalogue & overall staffing
levels”
» “No central resource
committed towards facilitating
this initiative”

33. :: Discussion :: Blockers part 2
» “Equipment sharing is still
viewed with certain amount
of cynicism”
» “Hard to evidence the
benefits”
» “Staff unwilling to travel or
sometimes walk to other
instruments that may be
available”
» “Nature of the applications
used”
» “Lack of time available to
help help with this”
» “Historical attitudes”

34. :: Discussion :: Enablers part 1
» “Senior management were
very supportive of Kit Cat”
» “We pushed this along for a
number of reasons; location of
researchers/building scattered
between four locations,
equipment asset register,
sharing of
equipment/resources, PAT test
register”
» “Communication and
awareness raising is always a
challenge in an institution
with large research staff
turnover. However we have a
good comms strategy”
» “We are also working hard to
align requirements for data
capture to existing admin
processes so there is no
additional burden on staff”

35. :: Discussion :: Enablers part 2
» “There are a number of key
academics who are bought into
equipment sharing”
» “With greater staff resource
I'm sure we could move the
project more quickly”
» “In general, there is buy-in, but
the practicalities of making it
work are very complex and
need full-time attention, which
we aren't currently resourced
for”
» “Integrated programme of
justify, purchase,
operate/maintain,
upgrade/replace”
» “School budgets are limited for
this so a proposal to increase
sharing/partnerships and
consultancy would enable the
programme to become reality”