In September 2019 EFIS Centre was commissioned by the University of Twente to support the internal team at the university looking into the topic of Research Infrastructure development. Prior to the start of the project preparatory work was done by a specially established internal university project group with respect to initial ideas around what constitutes strategic research infrastructure but external support was needed to assist the group in setting priorities and rules for strategic research infrastructure investments addressing the following questions:
•Which criteria, internal and external, could be used to decide on the RI decisions in order to prioritise different requests?
•How to prepare a long-term strategic investment plan on a University level?
•How to organise a formal process to determine the focus on which investments to make for a certain period and how to deal with the opportunities during this period?
•Who should be in charge of the dossier?
•Which financial arrangements can be put in place regarding strategic infrastructure? (NB: this is not about financial modelling but about principles and procedures)
•How can returns on investment, financial and/or public, be determined?
This technical assistance type of project was completed in March 2020 and was taken by the internal university team for further development.