Identifying common challenges in core facilities by benchmarking

The EU-LIFE Core Facilities Working Group publishes today an overview of the results of a survey conducted with the aim to benchmark the financial indicators, operational practices and staff at core facilities in EU-LIFE member institutes. The launch of the report is co-located with the International Conference for Research Infrastructures (ICRI 2022), which is held in Brno (Czech Republic) from 19 to 21 October.

This overview is a condensation of the exhaustive benchmarking report produced in the working group earlier this year and highlights its most important findings. The survey collected feedback from a total of 126 core facilities from 12 of our 15 partner institutions. Additionally, 102 core facilities managers provided information about the more qualitative and operational aspects of individual research infrastructures.

“The report is a useful reference tool to get insight into operational and financial strategies at research infrastructures. The working group also used the exercise to identify specific challenges and launch new initiatives to develop sustainable core facilities, as well as to assess existing ones,” said Sofie Kjellerup Christensen, EU-LIFE Project & Policy Officer and lead co-author of the survey report.

In the context of the EU-LIFE network, this overview report will serve as a reference document to share knowledge about common challenges, particularly how to best support core facilities staff, achieve the best technology and acquire all necessary skills.

The EU-LIFE Core Facilities Benchmarking Survey Overview is available here.
The EU-LIFE online booth at ICRI 2022 is available here.