Integration Activities

Lead: Professor Arthur Richards

Throughout the programme, a series of activities, events and managed interactions will integrate across research efforts that are proceeding in parallel. Including:

• Periodic use case workshops
• Stakeholder workshops
• Programme reviews throughout
• Integration and impact final work package

Management and Governance

T-B PHASE pursues a programme of research that has been defined through an extensive period of co-creation. It addresses a set of research challenges foundational to meeting the challenges of hybrid autonomous systems engineering. Crucially, these research efforts are integrated around a set of three cross-cutting use cases, and will be subject to explicit review and refocussing over the course of the programme. Therefore, the management and governance structures are of particular importance to T-B PHASE’s successful operation.

Overall Governance of the Thales-Bristol Partnership

T-B PHASE will be managed within the governance structures and processes that have already been established by the Thales Bristol Strategic Agreement (TBSA) signed by Bristol and Thales in December 2016. The TBSA institutes three overarching management bodies: (i) the TBSA Strategic Committee responsible for the governance and long-term vision for all TBSA research; (ii) the TBSA Steering Board responsible for the operational aspects of the agreement; and (iii) the TBSA Contracts Management Work Group that supports the implementation of the TBSA.

The TBSA Strategic Committee has oversight of the T-B PHASE programme and will take a role in monitoring and reviewing the programme’s strategic direction and progress.

The TBSA covers intellectual property (IP) management, confidentiality, publications, use of open source, liabilities, etc. The TBSA is supplemented by a Specific Agreement for each work item, elaborating its content, along with details of the available budget, start/finish targets, expected deliverables, etc.

T-B PHASE Senior Management Team

The Thales and Bristol principal investigators (Dr Matthew Ball and Prof. Arthur Richards) will take overall responsibility for programme delivery.  They will co-chair the T-B PHASE Management Team, which comprises the Thales theme leads and Bristol academic co-investigators. The Management Team will manage overall programme objectives including work-package progress, and will be responsible formally for PDRA line management and theme leadership, although in practice, the cross-disciplinary nature of the work will mean that a range of associate investigators including from Thales will collaborate with each PDRA. A Partnership Manager will support the Management Group in their duties, and the Bristol Doctoral College will facilitate T-B PHASE’s involvement with PhD students and its training component, via the Researcher’s Development and Training for Industry programme.

Matthew Ball will oversee liaison between T-B PHASE and relevant Thales operations, systems and work groups.

T-B PHASE Advisory Group

Comprising external stakeholders, sector experts, senior academics and an EPSRC representative.