Changes to the management of NERC services and facilities
The NERC Executive Board (NEB) has decided to transfer the management of some of the Swindon Office managed NERC services and facilities (S&F) to the NERC centres.
This will integrate the NERC S&F portfolio with national capability (NC) funded through the centres, move the management of the portfolio closer to the science, and make it easier for NERC to make joined-up investment decisions on its NC in particular science areas. The transfer of management responsibilities to the relevant centre will begin shortly and will be staggered throughout the 2013-14 financial year.
These changes are to the management of the NERC S&F only. We are not changing our service providers. Users of the NERC S&F portfolio should see no discernable change in the way they access the facilities.
Swindon Office will continue to be involved in NERC S&F, including maintaining responsibility for planning the portfolio and evaluation. It will continue to manage access to, and hold budgets for, a number of NERC S&F including high performance computing, marine planning and major UK and international facilities managed by the Science & Technology Facilities Council (eg Diamond, Research Complex at Harwell).
In addition, there are a number of (non NERC S&F) activities funded and managed through NERC centres that have characteristics of NERC S&F. These activities will be mapped and, where appropriate, brought together with the current activities to provide community access to an enhanced NERC S&F portfolio.
NERC services and facilities that will ultimately be managed by centres are:
- Argon Isotope Facility
- British Isles continuous GNSS Facility
- British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility
- Cosmogenic Isotope Analysis Facility
- Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric Radio Research
- European Incoherent Scatter Radar Support Facility
- Facility for Environmental Nanoparticle Analysis & Characterisation
- Field Spectroscopy Facility
- Geophysical Equipment Facility
- Ion Microprobe Facility
- Isotope Community Support Facility
- Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry Facility
- Mesosphere, Stratosphere & Troposphere Radar Facility
- NERC Biomolecular Analysis Facility
- NERC Earth Observation Data Acquisition & Analysis Service
- NERC Facility for Scientific Diving
- NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory
- NERC Radiocarbon Facility
- Space Geodesy Facility
For further information, please contact Andy Parsons, Head of Services & Facilities.