New Imperial network launches for Operational Excellence practitioners

The launch marks an important step in embedding Operational Excellence across the College.

Imperial’s Community of Practice has been established to bring together staff who have received training as part of the Operational Excellence (OE) Programme, and provide support and ongoing development opportunities.

The Community offers an online space to OE-trained staff, providing tools and resources, as well as a message board to share experiences and best practice. Staff will also be offered the opportunity to attend further specialist training and events to continue developing their skills. 

Marc Gray, Operational Excellence Programme Director, introduced the Community of Practice: "Training and ongoing development are a key part of embedding OE within the College, along with building relationships and working more collaboratively across teams – our new Community of Practice will help to make this happen".

The Community was launched at an event on 1 March, at which staff involved in Operational Excellence were thanked for their contributions. 

Professor James Stirling, Imperial’s Provost, spoke about the OE Programme and the progress made so far: “Since the launch of OE, we’ve come a long way in a remarkably short time. Everyone has a role to play in delivering excellence, and the principles of OE put the people involved at the heart of the process.”

Guest speaker Julie Robinson, previously Customer Services Director at Virgin Atlantic, then shared her experiences and insights on achieving results, gleaned from her work helping to establish the airline within three months.  

Angus Brown is Head of User Services in Library Services, and has been involved in a number of OE projects. Most recently, he worked on a Rapid Improvement Exercise which looked at the Library’s subscriptions portfolio. Angus said: “The Community of Practice creates a College-wide network of people who are all using OE techniques in their own areas. Through the Community, I hope to learn more about different parts of the College, as well as find out about techniques colleagues are using elsewhere and seeing if I can use them to help streamline processes within the Library.”