CLEARLY, the NSRI has a business plan, but what are the guts of it? The core is a five-year plan, but with annual waypoint targets.
“Within three years, our target is that we should have at least £10million of research-project income,” said Professor Rodger.
“In year one, we’re expecting to bring in the subscriptions needed to give us an operational base. We’re doing that with around £600,000 as the initial target.
“And when you look at the size of research contract awards that the universities are now bringing in – a number are set against the NSRI business plan – I am confident that we can achieve and exceed that three-year target.
“We’re finding, time and time again, that the support we have from industry is tremendous, and I think we have already exceeded our targets for this year.”
A widely held belief is that academics are precocious and out for themselves. While there was truth in this, Prof Rodger said he was confident of delivery based on co-operation.
He said, too, that the Northern Research Partnership possessed world-class people, such as authorities on mathematical modelling and processes.
“We have people who are sitting with 12,000 citations, people who are viewed as number one in the world in the area of complex systems analysis and non-linear dynamics.
“Their specialisms map as well into marine renewables as they do extraction of conventional hydrocarbons and (subsea) defence.
“We have a deep, rich resource of academics. As a result, through NSRI, there have been approaches from defence, renewables and conventionals.
“The fundamental thing is that, whatever we do, we will only do it if it can be done to the highest possible quality.
“We have a brand to establish and, given where we’re located and the confidence that industry has placed in us, we should only do it if we can do it to the highest possible quality.”
One of the issues that surely faces the NSRI is that its CEO is already a very busy man, holding down a big job at Aberdeen University. So how will the institute’s team evolve?
The response: “What I see is that I’m helping to establish the NSRI. But one of the key individuals that we will be appointing is the research director, which we will be advertising for soon, plus a range of staff to be appointed specifically to the institute.
“These are the individuals who will be setting the research agenda.
“The benefit of the position that I’m in at the moment is that I can bring additional administrative resource to this, which is helping to underwrite and establish NSRI in its current form.
“But as we grow the business plan and ambition, in a sense, the nature of the whole enterprise will have to change and, with it, the people. So it will need a significant management and administrative resource. It all links into success.
“Headhunters were appointed last year in terms of new staff that we could build in in anticipation of establishing an institute of this kind.
“But it’s like the positions that we have made here at Aberdeen University over the last few years; we will only make the research director appointment if we’ve got the best person.
“That best person could come from industry.
“That we have an important set of academics already together, and inter-university, means that this will be a joint enterprise.
“There is no doubt in my mind that we will not only deliver this as expected, but we’re going to make people very surprised by the outcome.”
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