Management structure

The work of the project will be ultimately governed by a consortium agreement between the partner institutions, who together have the power to freeze the project and renegotiate with the EPSRC (if needed). The partner institutions will be ultimately responsible for the funds spent and will appoint auditors for the project.

A management committee, consisting of Fieldhouse (PI), McKane (CoI) and Edmonds (CoI), will be responsible for allocation of resources, for example funding and staffing, monitoring the progression of the research and performance against budget, and risk management. This committee is financially and legally responsible to the partner institutions.

A coordinating committee consisting of all team members will coordinate and monitor the conduct of the research activity carried out by investigators and their research assistants. If consensus cannot be reached on any action issue the management committee will take the final decision.

An advisory panel consisting of external policy advisors and academics will provide advice to the investigators regarding the relevance and direction of the programme.

A yearly review meeting will be held to assess progress and plan future research efforts. This will consist of the management committee plus two external advisors from the advisory panel, to which the senior management of the partner institutions and a member from the EPSRC will also be invited. This is co-located with the advisory panel meetings and the yearly open workshop.

m_structure

The coordinating committee will meet monthly and the management committee at least six-monthly (or as required). Coordinating and management committees report to the advisory panel.

Day to day management strategy

PI Ed Fieldhouse will be chair of the management committee, responsible for leading the overall research programme. He will also be line manager for the two postgraduate research staff based in the ISC. CoI Bruce Edmonds will be academic lead for the agent based modelling research work, line management of CPM research staff and supervision of PhD students. CoI Alan McKane will be academic lead for mathematical/analytical modelling research work and line management of TPG research staff. Researcher CoI Nick Shryane will be academic lead for the diversity and social trust theme (theme A) and will be responsible for coordination of the complexity science and social science research inputs. CoI Yaojun Li will be academic lead for the macro-level data collation and the socio-political and socio-economic themes (Theme B and C). CoI Nick Crossley will be academic lead for the data collection and will advise on social networks elements of all themes.

The different research teams will meet internally on a weekly basis. A standing weekly discussion meeting will provide the opportunity to present intermediate results and discuss open questions. Additional discussions between researchers will be easy to arrange on demand whenever necessary as the partner institutions are so close.

Monitoring

The coordinating committee is to monitor the conduct of the research carried out by investigators and their research assistants. A scoping activity during the initial phase of the project will draw up a project guide document detailing terms of reference for management, coordinating and advisory groups as well as broad topic domains and data sources for subsequent surveys that fit with the policy objectives. The coordinating committee will be responsible for the detailed implementation and monitoring of milestones in the research programme, first for those specified in the work plan and later for the milestones that emerge in years 3, 4 and 5.

SCID will be assessed and critiqued by means of the external advisory panel. Once a year there will be a meeting of the advisory panel combined with a workshop, where interim results from activities and competing ideas for future directions are presented as well as selected contributions from invited advisors and other academics. The advisory panel will give feedback and advice to the investigators regarding the policy and academic directions of the research programme.

Strategy for managing flexibility of resources

The coordinating committee is responsible for the selection of future directions. Following the feedback from the advisory panel (above), investigators draw up short proposals for changes to the existing work plan. These are discussed at a meeting of the coordinating committee, where ideas to take forward are selected. Selection of such directions and milestones for the latter part of the project, and changes to existing milestones that will have significant resourcing implications, will be ratified and signed off by the management committee. The management committee will be responsible for weighing the potential risks and benefits of new or amended resource allocations, and for altering organisational and management procedures to reflect these considerations.

A core part in guaranteeing project resilience is adequate training, tuition and integration of the research staff. We have therefore allotted the first few months of the project for tailored training in each other’s areas of expertise. In addition, training and mentoring for PDRAs and supervision for PhDs will continue throughout the duration of the project. To this end, PhD students and RAs will be able to take advantage of the considerable provision of advanced training already in existence in the Universities (both of which are recognised Research Councils training centres) for post-graduate and doctoral training.

Resources for project management

In addition to the structures described above, the following additional management resources are available to aid in the project management.

Senior management in the partner institutions will be available for a distant watching brief on the project, being part of the review meeting, drafting and in control of the consortium agreement between them and directly responsible to the EPSRC for ensuring the funds are properly spent. In the case of PI or CoIs leaving the project they would appoint replacements, under consultation with the rest of the management committee.

Financial management will be done by the management committee in conjunction with the appropriate staff in the participating institutions finance departments. Personnel matters would be handled with the assistance of the relevant human resources department.

Training and development provision for staff and RAs (both academic and generic) will be done largely within the extensive staff resources of the project investigators. Training and supervision of the PhD students will be done within the individual project teams and the participating institution’s structures.

Funding has been asked for administrator time specifically for the project – this will be directly responsibility to the PI in conjunction with the management committee. PI and CoI time has been set aside specifically for coordination. There are Researcher CoI with specific roles for cross-site, cross-discipline communication and coordination. Advisory group meetings and the yearly workshops add new insights from elsewhere.

SCID will have a strong focus on disseminating results in a timely fashion to a wide audience, from academics to stakeholders such as policy makers and the interested public. To this aim, a project web site will be set up, linked to from both University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. It will host (links to) all material created and published during the lifetime of the project, such as the surveys of evidence and abstract models, simulation results, and model code. The latter will also be made available via the Open Agent-Based Modelling Consortium (http://openabm.org). Whenever possible, electronic versions of the publications of project findings in scientific journals and conferences will be uploaded to the project web site.