P. Cost-cutting.

Although we are all trying to do more and better for our clients, ultimately our employers have to impose limits / constraints and restrictions upon us.  

This may be in terms of:

• priority
• urgency (limited time)
• budget (limited money)
• volume
• quality

As Graham Greene said in his book Brighton Rock, it is about: ...'making the best of  bad job of it'….. we never seem to have the resources to do 'it' (whatever it might be) PROPERLY.  My Dad (a print company Production Manager) had a poster on his office wall that read:

"We do three kinds of job here: GOOD…. FAST  …..  CHEAP : You may choose any two:

If it is Good and Fast – it will not be Cheap.

If it is Good and Cheap – it will not be Fast.

If it is Fast and Cheap – it will not be Good."

The point is that whehter you are an Engineer, a Museum Collections specialist, a Documentation or Archives expert you will always be subject to the same issues and constraints: money being the principal one.  I have never known, in 35 years of working in industry or academia, the 'luxury' of having the time and the money to do the 'job' as well as you would wish it to be done.  Some difficult/hard choices always have to be made which involve 'hurting' someone somewhere: making people redundant so that the business / service can survive…. passing extra costs on to your clients who perhaps cnnot afford such price increases.

So here's the task.  

This university desperately needs to 'balance the books' by as much as 1,800,000 Euros within the current academic year…. i.e. to fill in a 'hole' whereby our costs are out-stripping our revenues by approaching 2,000,000 Euros per annum..

There are some obvious options (unless you can think of more):

1. cut costs
2. increase revenues
3. a combination of A + B.
4. close the university and export our courses to Strasbourg.

Q. Given the above: how can this university make the sort of savings that are required of it?

For information, the principal areas of costs are the following:

1. Staffing. Teaching, technical/ administrative and support staffing. 
2. Buildings and estates. Maintenance, repair, replacement.
3. Energy / services. Lighting, heating, water.
4. Operations: Partnerships, travel, subsistence,marketing PR and communications
5. Fixtures and fittings. Desks, shelves, chairs, OHPs, data projectors etc. 
6. Plant. Computers, photocopiers, printers, machinery
7. Consumables: paper, ink cartridges, pens etc

Method: 

1. Sit and think quietly to yourself and come up with some ideas of costs that could be saved and income that could be generated.
2. Get into small teams of 2 or 3 to pool your ideas.
3. Share these ideas with all the teams
4. Split into two teams: The Cost-Cutters and The Revenue Generators and develop your lists of proposed actions for presentation to the entire cohort (promotion).  
5. Present these lists and develop an action programme for Christine Gangloff the University Presidente.

Oh, I nearly forgot: why the dog photo.   Well MINTY (Araminta) had aheart complaint that we were told was to shorten her life to a matter of three or four years…  So does one put the dog down or spend enormous sums of money trying to keep it (her) alive, knowing that the battle would be lost?   There are unacceptable choices there, but one has to choose……