RED

• Research development
• Research policy
• Research governance
• Contracts
  • Types of contract
  • Contracts guidance
  • The contracting process
  • ORCA database
  • External parties
  • Our contact details
• Project management
• Business acceleration
• How we work with business
• Commercialising research
• Student enterprise

External parties

• How we work
• How we support the process
• FAQ's (for external parties)

How we work

There is a wide range of different organisations that choose to work with us often with different needs and objectives.  For example, you may be a global company; a small or medium sized enterprise (local or national); government department, other ‘Public Purse’ agency (national or international); charity; research council; or other academic or private research institution.

We work with these and many organisations to:

• Carry out joint research;
• Perform specific research to your requirement;
• Transfer technology and know-how in a usable form;
• Address and solve specific problems through consultancy services;
• Provide opportunities to sponsor postgraduate students and help us develop the next generation of world-class researchers (please see our FAQ's for external parties (PDF, 82KB) on benefits).

Sometimes this work is supported and funded by us and you (and, perhaps, others); it may be that you have specific needs and require a research project funded at commercial rates (our FAQ's for external parties (PDF, 82KB) may help on this); or wish to access the wealth of world-class technology and expertise we have already developed.  Often, you may wish to support some academic initiated research in your area of interest in exchange for some benefit to you – our FAQ's for external parties (PDF, 82KB) on Publication may be of interest here.  Sometimes contracts are needed even though there is no funding from you to us.

The RED Contracts team is required to review, negotiate and approve to Finance Services the terms of all contracts that can be classified with ‘Research’ being the major theme (together with a few related areas such as, for example ‘Consultancy’).

We are a highly experienced team and work closely with both our internal research community and with our external partners and stakeholders, to deliver formal agreements giving you and us the rights and assurances we both need.  We aim to deliver a high quality service as we engage with our research partners.

How we support the process

• Understanding your requirements;
• Using either your or our standard templates or relevant precedent;
• Creating contract documents tuned to specific circumstances;
• Supporting joint bids and tenders;
• Developing collaboration or consortium agreements;
• Placing or receiving sub-contracts for use of facilities and specialist skills.

We aim to make your experience of working with the University a positive experience and to this end we always set out clearly, our mutual obligations and dependencies. The University has established many long-term relationships supported by framework agreements, strategic alliance or partnership agreements, and other types of ‘rolling’ or ‘enabling’ style agreements.  We actively promote this approach with our research partners wherever appropriate. 

Our goal is to be ‘easy to do business with’ and we encourage the use of our library of standard templates and other tools developed and refined with the support of our partners. We welcome constructive feedback and undertake frequent reviews of our processes, to improve towards this goal. 

Our aim is to ensure there is an appropriate balance of risk against both commercial and intellectual benefit, within the university’s prime, charitable mandate to provide research and higher education for the public good (more detail in our FAQ's for external parties (PDF, 82KB)).  As you expect, there are many types of non-financial agreements that are needed to underpin the prime research or consultancy contracts such as confidentiality agreements, memoranda of understanding, or letters of intent and, once a project is running, there may be a need for a Material Transfer Agreement.

Whatever the nature of the relationship, we will work with you to put the necessary arrangements in place quickly and efficiently.

FAQ's

We have a FAQ's for external parties (PDF, 82KB) document available, which contains common questions from external parties. 

 

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