Archives for April 2011

Last week I informed our team that BBC Workplace is on a journey of rationalisation and reorganisation which will result in a new look Workplace.

We need to build on our achievements, learn from our successes and challenges and close out the major projects in Cardiff, Salford and W1. But we must achieve a 25% reduction in our staff and contractor costs as part of the BBC’s overall efficiency measures.

Workplace will lose its London centric dominance, with staff split 60/40 between out of London (the focus being on Salford), and the capital. We will be relocating up to 10 posts to Salford in the near future with a further 20 to 30 posts by the end of 2013/14.

We will continue to operate and change the estate. But as the period of large-scale investment and major projects draws to a close we will adjust the change part of our remit to focus on efficiency and rationalisation.

Our aim will be to "do fewer things better" and help the Operations Group lead the BBC in implementing new, simpler ways of working.

We will continue to be mobile and flexible, but in a much greater way than today. We will be an agile One Workplace team.

We need to leave behind old practices and ways of working that slow us down. Where processes don’t work - change them.

Workplace needs to be ready and able to help make sure the BBC can retain its world-leading position and use these changes as a catalyst for positive change. We are all part of ONE BBC.

There’s been fantastic progress at Roath Lock - our new drama village in Wales. Sectional completion was achieved on 23 March with the handover of the Casualty studios and external lot area– on schedule and on budget.

Despite adverse winter weather conditions, the studios in Cardiff have taken shape extremely quickly. The contract was signed in December 2009 and it was only in July last year that the first of the piles went in on site.Just over a year to practical completion is very quick for a construction project of this scale, and this is down to the sterling efforts of the 025 team, in particular Jim Brown, and collaboration with the construction team Vinci, and igloo Regeneration.

News from the 025 team is that construction of Casualty’s studio is well underway. Studio 1 is first to be fitted out and this will become a two-storey hospital set.

It is expected that practical completion for the rest of the Drama Village will be reached in June and Casualty will start filming there in the autumn.

As well as being a new home for Casualty, the new 170,000 sq ft (15,800 sq m) production village will welcome Dr Who and Pobol y Cwm in 2012.

On a recent visit to MediaCityUK, the BBC’s new North headquarters in Salford, I did a double take when I spotted a flock of 12 sheep making its way across site!

The Herdwick sheep, normally found grazing in the Lake District, were there to highlight that a retail outlet selling local produce will open on site in the autumn.

MediaCityUK will have a major impact on the economy of the North West and the wider North of England, and this shows it’s not just the media industry who will benefit.