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UCL Change Builders: Framework of the Future: Recognising UCL’s community of Technical Professionals
Meet the UCL Change Builders helping to drive progress for our community of staff, students and partners.
30 April 2024
Introducing UCL Change Builders
As part of our shared efforts to deliver on our Strategic Plan and respond to insights raised, teams across UCL have been working hard to drive progress for our expansive community.
It's often the combined efforts of many small steps of improvement, which build together to create immense impact, that make up much of our progress.
Recognising and celebrating the teams behind these efforts, UCL Change Builders spotlights these stories of change.
Know a Change Builder? Get in touch!
Technical Professionals at UCL
UCL’s diverse community includes some 1000 Technical Professionals – from technicians, research professionals and team-science professionals, to workshop engineers, data scientists, research nurses, and more.
Technical Professionals are central to enabling UCL’s delivery of world-leading research. However, they don’t always receive sufficient career mechanisms for personal professional recognition and development.
Committing to technical career progression
The launch of UCL’s very first Careers Framework for Technical Professionals aims to mark a step towards correcting this issue, and follows on from a number of actions the institution has taken in recent years towards this aim.
In October 2018, UCL signed the Technician Commitment, a national initiative aimed towards increasing the visibility and recognition of the profession and improving opportunities for career development.
Since signing the commitment, UCL created the Technical Managers Group (TMG) to oversee and drive forward implementation of its Technician Commitment Action Plan. It has also established two Communities of Practice for Technical Staff.
TMG, UCL Organisational Development and the university’s Technical Professionals community came together to develop the Careers Framework – which aims not only to recognise the critical roles that our Technical Professionals play, but to also provide a clear path for career development and advancement.
Input and dialogue from all corners of the university’s Technical Professionals community were central elements in its creation.
Shaping the future: a new Hub for Technical Professionals at UCL
Alongside the Framework, the university has established a Technical Skills Development Hub (TSDH) – a new organisational home for Technical Professionals that offers central support and oversight of career development, technical skills management and the attraction and retention of technical talent.
The Careers Framework and TSDH serve as a cornerstone in UCL’s strategy to enable the university to continue to be the Higher Education employer of choice for Technical Professionals in the UK and beyond – working to help attract top talent and contributing to fostering a culture where Technical Professionals at UCL are visible, recognised, and celebrated.
Watch the video below to find out more about the Framework from Isabel Goncalves Cattuzzo, Technical Skills Development Hub Manager and Uzma Sadiq, Apprenticeships Manager (UCL East and Technical Community).