Managing Berlin’s largest non-university research facility
In conversation with Manuela Urban, director of the Forschungsverbund Berlin e. V.
The Forschungsverbund Berlin e. V. (FVB) is Berlin’s largest non-university research facility, employing 2,000 people. As the science manager, Manuela Urban is responsible for steering the FVB ship safely through the rough waters of bureaucracy. Full-steam ahead toward a sustainable administration, her rising tide is also lifting up employee development, digital transformation and building refurbishment.
What is the Forschungsverbund Berlin?
It consists of eight institutes of the Leibniz-Association, three of which are based in Adlershof. These include the Ferdinand-Braun-Institute (Leibniz-Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik, FBH), the Leibniz-Institute for Crystal Growth (IKZ) and the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI). The FVB’s joint administration is also based in Adlershof.
The FVB was originally planned as the institutes’ project sponsor for five years. It recently celebrated its 25th birthday. It seems the holding company model was the right form of organisation.
Yes, a makeshift solution has evolved into a model solution. All the institutes have repeatedly received outstanding evaluations: they are among the best in the world. The FVB has grown substantially, which is due to the successful acquisition of external funding (“third-party funding”). From originally 750 employees, that number has now almost tripled. The institutes are academically independent and take care of their core business, while being supported by an administration with very broad experience.
How large is the administration?
The department had 92 employees in 1992 and now has 129. In addition, there are eleven trainees. Although we train more people than we need and offer students to write their BA and MA theses, we do have a recruitment problem. Science management is a highly specialised field. It is neither like the administration of a public agency, nor like managing a company. Having knowledge from all three sectors is ideal: science, business management and public administration.
How do you define science management?
The definition of the term is not clear. In the broadest sense, I see it as supporting science and research. This includes the core business of administration like human resources, funding, procurement, construction and building maintenance, facility management but also coordinating large cooperative projects, management of external funding (“third-party funding”), knowledge and technology transfer and fostering the next generation of science.
What are the future key activities of the FVB?
Above all, our focus is on the future of our institutes and staffing our executive positions: we are currently looking for new directors for the IKZ in Adlershof and the Leibniz-Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). There will be more vacancies in the years to come. Administratively, our key tasks are: making the joint appointment process at Berlin’s universities more competitive on an international level, refurbishing our buildings, modernising the administration and establishing sustainable life cycle management.
What are the issues regarding the joint appointment process?
The joint appointment of scientists for professorships at partnering universities, which is linked with taking over an executive position at one of our non-university research facilities, currently takes at least 1.5. years. The process is excessively complex and takes too long, because many individual steps must be taken and many bodies are involved. The following years will see many joint appointments and Berlin as a whole is facing a decade of new appointments. Our goal is to improve this process so we will be able to keep up with Princeton, Stanford and Zurich.
What are the barriers on the path to building refurbishment?
We have 47 buildings and are building one more with the Freie Universität Berlin in Dahlem, which will be completed in a few years. Many of them have been refurbished in the 1990s and have aged. To keep the buildings à jour, we must renovate roofs and invest in technical building services and energy. Despite increasing spending fourfold in the last two decades, it has not been enough to maintain our buildings. Our institutes require additional funds, otherwise their research will be restricted in favour of building maintenance. We have determined that we need to invest an additional three to five million euros per year so the gap does not widen. We are very glad that our main financial institutions on the federal and state level are supporting us.
What your plans regarding Administration 4.0?
The digital transformation is enabling us to change the way we organise and improve administrative processes across our various locations. This will open more space for the increasingly complex administrative tasks. Moreover, we want to invest more in employee development. A very important component of our human resources strategy is our in-house leadership programme for the scientific director level.
Interview by Sylvia Nitschke for Adlershof Journal