"We are all trying to do something that we have never done before" Management of furthering research equipment sharing amongst UK Universities

HEI systems in Europe and internationally are facing significant changes to funding and management structures due to austerity measures and increasing claims that as science is publically funded to a great extent, it should be efficiently and openly managedFollowing the UK Government?s announcements regarding capital budgets and funding, Universities in the UK have set up regional groups that work towards furthering research equipment sharing. The aim of this work is to ensure that academics can work collaboratively to fully exploit the range of equipment across the research base where spare capacity exists and sharing is economic. Due to the competitive nature within the overall field of science and more specifically the UK HEI system, significant management effort is required to successfully facilitate equipment sharing between universities. This paper presents a case study and explores how such a large scale change can be managed, what the key barriers are and how these can be overcome. The research was conducted within one of the regional consortium management group and this paper presents findings from interviews with members of the management teams, observation of working group meetings and analysis of work documents. Preliminary findings indicate that the management team realise that they are at the forefront of a significant and multifaceted change of longstanding and rooted HEI management systems, e.g. including contract, funding, insurance, health & safety, tax and academic training. All these systems furthermore reside within the larger field of scientific practice, with its inherent competition between universities and academics, for resources and prestige, which further complicates the task at hand.