Project title:  Creating organizational capabilities: A holistic approach to asset management for the RNLI and its stakeholders

Supervisors:  Dr Graeme Larsen, Prof Stuart Green

Project Overview:   

Developing a bespoke asset management methodology.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) is a large client to the construction sector, with over 1,000 buildings located in remote and extreme locations across the UK. The RNLI’s buildings must function at 100% all year round to ensure that lifeboats can be launched and lives saved.

To achieve this, the building facilities must be fit for purpose and managed effectively and efficiently. Like many large clients, the RNLI’s built facilities and in particular the processes to manage them require improvement. The research aims to improve the process for managing a large portfolio of built facilities. 

Further complexities arise from the RNLI’s operating model of a charity. It is run on voluntary donations and predominantly operated by volunteers who are heavily embedded in their local communities. Central to this is the requirement to balance regional autonomy, the central control and strategic direction offered from the head office. This means that off the shelf approaches are invariably unsuitable. This is compounded by the dearth of research recognising such complexities in the academic literature regarding such processes.

Central to the research problem is providing the RNLI with the capability to unlearn current practices and then learn new practices. As such, the research will be positioned within the literatures on organisational innovation and organisational change together with that of loosely and tightly coupled networks. The primary outcome will be a new understanding of the capabilities of a construction client, its stakeholders and its supply network. The operational methodology to be developed will need to consider the current technologies, systems and process exploited by the RNLI together with their key associated stakeholders.

Eligibility: 

• Applicants should have industry experience, balanced against a good 2.1 or equivalent. The applicant must be an effective communicator and able to work with a range of different professionals with competing agendas. During the empirical phase of the research, national travel will be required.
• Due to restrictions on the funding this studentship is open to UK/EU students.

Funding Details:  

• Starts October 2015
• Three year award
• Tuition fees plus £13,863 stipend

How to apply:   

To apply for this studentship please submit an application for a PhD in Construction Management athttp://www.reading.ac.uk/graduateschool/prospectivestudents/gs-how-to-apply.aspx. 

*Important note* Please quote the reference ‘GS15-009’ in the ‘Scholarships applied for’ box which appears within the Funding Section of your online application.

Application Deadline:  1^st May 2015

Further Enquiries:  

Please note that, where a candidate is successful in being awarded funding, this will be confirmed via a formal studentship award letter; this will be provided separately from any Offer of Admission and will be subject to standard checks for eligibility and other criteria. 

For further details please contact Dr Graeme Larsen, email g.d.larsen<στο>reading.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0) 118 378 7185.