Managers within pan-European research infrastructures need a thorough understanding of this unique landscape, in addition to excellent, state-of-the-art administrative and management skills, if they are to succeed. Many senior managers within research infrastructures come from classical research backgrounds, but the competencies required to manage research infrastructures are somewhat different: research infrastructures are primarily service organisations; they need to operate as businesses with a client base. A robust understanding of how current research infrastructure systems run and how different research policies are formulated and implemented in EU countries is required. Other important skills include governance, accounting, public procurement, data management, security, transnational trade, user engagement, service development, systems administration and ethical and legal compliance. Such skills should be developed based on generic state-of-the-art managerial and operational skills and supplemented by RI-specific requirements. Importantly, research infrastructure managers often need to gain these competencies at a stage in their careers when they are already relatively senior and cannot commit a large proportion of their time to training. Training therefore needs to be tailored to busy professionals and needs to be sufficiently flexible for them to focus on developing new competencies rather than repeating prior learning. On the other hand, the need for an increasing number of professional RI managers is steadily increasing. More and more managers will be recruited from the open job market. Based on a clearly defined competency profile and effective guidance on how to fill competency gaps through tailored training programmes, RIs need to establish themselves as preferred employers attracting the most talented individuals. Provision of high-quality and respected training programmes provides one means of achieving this.
The overarching goal of RItrain is to identify the competency requirements for the professional management of European research infrastructures (RI) and design a training programme to fulfil these requirements. Our highest priority is those professionals who are already working in research infrastructures, including directors, project managers, heads of HR, legal representatives and communications experts.
