Core Values
Core ValuesAt our kick-off meeting in January 2017, our project lead, Professor Jeanette Rotchell, led partners through an exercise which resulted in the identification of a set of core values for our project. All partners agreed that the following values are vital to the running and delivery of our project:
Transparency and accountability
Awareness and respect for other partners
Connectivity and transnational cooperation
Informed curiosity and wider project perspective
Goal-oriented and focused on milestone
Positivity and fun
Trust and integrity
The importance of core values in the running of our project - from our Project Lead, Jeanette Rotchell:
Sullied Sediments is a large project which I like to describe as ‘a machine with a lot of moving parts’. We are addressing three main objectives around sediment characterisation, treatment methods to remove watch list chemicals and also influencing citizens behaviour to reduce the amount of such chemicals released into the environment. Our team includes colleagues from a wide a and varied background and we both literally and figurately speak many different languages. Despite such a complex partnership and diverse objectives, we function well as a project and I feel that this is down in part to having agreed, and comply with, a set of core values from the very beginning.
Transparency and accountability has helped in that we become aware of any problems or issues quickly and can then act as a partnership to move ahead. Awareness and respect for others, may seem a weird core value, yet has been key with work packages where we have multiple partners needing to coordinate their efforts on tight time scales so that the resulting scientific investigations can be conducted. We’ve coordinated a seasonal sampling programme at nine sites, with very large boxes of sediments jetting around the North Sea Region for multiple analyses by various partners, without too many glitches. In adopting this coordinated, transnational approach, we are generating an excellent dataset that will have incredible breadth, depth and detail. On occasion, the academics among us are carried away with interesting side avenues, but staying goal-orientated and focussed on our project milestones has prevented any serious distractions. Finally, I think it is fair to say that when we come together as a partnership, while we do work hard towards our goals, we are all having some fun too. We know each other well, trust each other to deliver and that brings a certain kind of reassurance from my project management point of view.
Of course, these may be famous last words, but we have passed the half way point of the project are already seeing some of the fruits of our combined labours.