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8 Business Insight Knowledge-based economy Inverness Campus looks set to become a role model for bringing together learning and business, reveals Rob Stokes Thursday January 9 2014 | the times he foundations of Inverness Campus are not so much set in cement as in the economic history of the Highlands and Islands over recent decades. With a growing population, and unemployment rates consistently below national averages, the region’s fortunes as a whole have improved dramatically in the last 50 years. The creation of the Highlands & Islands Development Board (HIDB) in the 1960s and its successor Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) in 1991 were major steps which, under successive governments, helped to reverse previously chronic depopulation and create a more diverse economy. “Population is growing sustainably in around 90 per cent of the region,” says Ruaraidh MacNeil, director of Inverness Campus. “But the 16 to 25 year olds demographic remains an issue.” Which is due largely to young people leaving to access mainly higher education and first jobs. MacNeil is himself an example of this trend. Originally from Barra, he left the region in his twenties for a job in London before returning to take up a post at the HIDB in Inverness. However, many such migrants end up staying in areas where they studied or started a career. The result is that their skills can be lost during the years when they could make a considerable economic impact. Hence the emphasis on creating and developing the University of the Highlands and Islands for which HIE has been a main proponent and driver. “For hundreds of years, the region had aspirations towards its own university but never managed it until now,” MacNeil says. “It has grown out of awareness that the healthiest economies have strong universities at their core.” The evolution of UHI’s federal structure, embracing 13 colleges and other research institutes across the region, culminated in formal university status being awarded in 2011. The Inverness College UHI building under construction at the heart of Inverness Campus will be a powerful symbol of its status. “With the title secure, the aim is that UHI becomes a very strong university that young people from the region and elsewhere will want to put down as their preferred choice,” MacNeil says. “It’s a brand new university with a unique model. With so many young people now being technology literate, and with new means of distance learning, the time is right for UHI to make a powerful impact.” HIE and UHI are negotiating to share 4,200 square metres of space in another new building on Inverness Campus. UHI wants an Inverness site to support its partner colleges and institutions, so is looking for a research and education building on the Campus as a partnership asset. HIE needs a new headquarters as it has to hand over its present offices to Capgemini in the summer as the firm will use the location to bring 500 jobs to the city. “UHI and HIE agree that as we The landscaping of the campus provides its unique character Foundations for a place to learn, lead . . . and live The people in Oulu advised us to focus on key strengths – in our case, healthcare and life sciences Ruaraidh MacNeil project director, Inverness Campus collaborate on economic development we should perhaps co-locate, leading potentially to even more cross-fertilisation,” says MacNeil. UHI is talking to Scotland’s Rural College, which is focused on agriculture research, about sharing part of its building. Other proposals to join HIE and UHI on this plot include a Science Academy to promote science, technology, engineering and maths to school students. “It’s still being fleshed out,” says MacNeil. “But it is an exciting idea which could open up new opportunities for young people as well as broadening the regional skills base.” Inverness Campus became a coherent project in the last decade as three themes converged: HIE’s mission to attract and foster more knowledge-based industries; the need to replace Inverness College’s outdated building if UHI was to have an iconic focus; and the rise of the region’s life sciences sector, which employs over 1,000 in Inverness alone. “In LifeScan Scotland, which is part of Johnson and Johnson, we were fortunate to have Scotland’s largest medical technology company in Inverness, and that shaped our thinking about what could be achieved with UHI and the knowledge economy,” MacNeil recalls. HIE’s vision for Inverness Campus really crystallised following its success with the Centre for Health Science, which opened in 2007. Casting around for appropriate development models among similar regions, with a university and one major city considered remote from the rest of a country, HIE lighted on Oulu in northern Finland. “In the early 1960s, Oulu was similar to Inverness. Yet it had managed to transform itself over 30 years into a high technology based city with a population around 192,700,” says MacNeil. “This transformation was on the back of the local college becoming a university focused on electronics and technology.” “It was a good model,” says MacNeil. “The people in Oulu advised us to focus on key strengths — in our case healthcare and life sciences — and make sure we have a strong, research focused university.” The result was the innovative Centre for Health Science a partnership led by HIE to capitalise on the region’s growing reputation in life sciences. Bringing together units from four Scottish universities, pioneering diabetes research, a leading dental school, and clinical care and treatment for patients, the Centre was conceived as a model of productive collaboration between academics, health professionals and business people, facilitated by the public sector. Success with this multi-million pound project, which opened in 2007 and now employs around 250 people, helped drive and focus the agency’s vision for Inverness Campus. Indeed, it could almost be seen as a trial run for what HIE aims to achieve, on a larger scale, with the Campus over the coming years. In a reverse move, Scandinavia now comes to Inverness in search of models. “A lot of interest in the Centre for Health Science and Inverness Campus has been from Norway,” MacNeil says. “Overall, we’ve hosted well over 100 visits now, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Once people understand our vision, and see the effort that is going into ensuring the new landscaping and built environment match the superb quality of the natural surroundings, they’re just blown away.” He admits that 15 years ago, the notion of building a knowledge-based economy in the Highlands and Islands seemed a tall order. “I think our confidence has grown,” he suggests. “Back then, because it had never happened before, people imagined that it was impossible. But when we went to Oulu they advised us to just start doing it. “One critical piece of advice they gave us was the importance of partnership - bringing together interested parties, exploring themes of common interest and developing highly ambitious ideas which a broad community of interest could get behind. “As well as being the catalyst for the highly collaborative model which we then developed for the Campus, that really got us thinking about the need for a community purpose to be at the core of the project. And that’s an aspect which really makes Inverness Campus unique.” Community and leisure aspects of Inverness Campus include proposals for significant sports facilities. Most existing facilities are in the west of the city while the majority of population growth has been to the east, close to the site of the Campus. In discussion with sports associations and with UHI, which is keen to develop its academic interest in sport, HIE is working on a model to provide sports facilities for students, staff and the community at large. “It may also focus in time on supporting elite sports and on growing the academic content around that,” says Mac- Neil. “A key point is that we want the campus to be exciting for young people. We want there to be lots of activity on site, accommodation for them, and a healthy cultural scene — music, drama and so on — attached to it. That’s the mission for the next five to ten years.”
the times | Thursday January 9 2014 9 Business Insight With every fibre of our being A faster and more reliable broadband system could radically transform how we communicate in many different areas of life, writes Ginny Clark It seems incredible that it is only 37 years since the GPO closed the last manual telephone exchange in the UK, at Portree on the Isle of Skye, paving the way for Subscriber Trunk Dialling, then wholesale conversion to electronic systems, a modernisation programme that was not completed in Scotland until the mid-1990s. However, less than a generation after that, in 2014 and beyond, BT will be spinning out a network web that offers fast, efficient digital connectivity to some of Scotland’s most remote corners. In their most complex digital project yet, BT will be tackling Scotland’s rugged terrain to deliver next generation broadband (NGB) to homes and businesses in a £146 million investment project that has been developed by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). This project, representing another step towards the Scottish Government’s target of making world-class NGB available to all by 2020, will increase high-speed fibre broadband coverage across the Highlands and Islands to up to 84 per cent of premises by 2016. Public sector investment will total £126.4 million, and it is being delivered through a Scottish Government fund that includes finance from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), and up to £12 million from HIE, with BT investing an additional £19.4 million. It’s an ambitious move on a number of levels, explains Brendan Dick, Director of BT Scotland, as it’s not only the most significant digital infrastructure project in Scotland’s history, helping Highland and Island businesses to compete on the international stage; it’s also part of a wider aim to revolutionise the way in which we deliver everything from education to public services. “We’re at a really interesting time for high-speed digital services,” he says. “Those in government and business do genuinely understand that to compete globally, you must have digital connectivity. HIE understands this, but with this programme in particular there has been a significant step change in the emphasis on gaining economic and social value from the infrastructure by helping communities and businesses to exploit it. “It’s striking that the latest research shows for every £1 invested in broadband infrastructure, the UK economy will benefit by £20. That’s a really impressive figure, which emphasises the importance of looking at high-speed connectivity in terms of economic benefit. “The Scottish Government’s ambition for 2020 recognises that it’s not just about finding partners for investment, but at the same time driving the exploitation of NGB through a digital participation programme into the third sector and out into The latest research shows for every £1 invested in broadband the UK economy will benefit by £20 the communities. If we only put pipes in the ground, and no one does anything to make sure people benefit from that, it would be a waste.” Dick believes initiatives such as BT’s partnership with the Scottish Government and Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) are good examples of the way forward. GHA has been involved in trial projects to encourage digital participation by tenants. In a city reported to have a low level of broadband take-up, at just 60 per cent compared to the UK average of 78 per cent, GHA’s figures showed only one third of their tenants were online, and that 90 per cent of their tenants over the age of 65 had never used the internet. “It’s very apposite in looking at the broader aspect of connectivity, where GHA have demonstrated to a number of their customers who were not engaged in the digital network that they would be disadvantaged in future. It’s cheaper to buy online, while the ability to get jobs without online access is also decreasing, and there are other issues, such as interacting with public bodies and accessing services following welfare reform. “So there is an opportunity in Scotland, not just to catch up England on take-up, but through a joined-up approach to transform the landscape of how we exploit connectivity.” First, however, must come those “pipes in the ground”. Improvements are also being rolled out in Dumfries, the Borders and Aberdeenshire, among other places, in a second Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband partnership with the Scottish Government, local authorities and others, but the Highlands and Islands project represents an incredible undertaking for BT. Their engineers have started work on an infrastructure project that will be using more than 800km of fibre to build a ‘backbone’ that will run from Campbeltown in Argyll to Brae on Shetland. They will also use a further 1100km of existing fibre that is already in the ground, linking in dozens of exchanges to ensure this web of fibre will extend from the backbone out into local communities. In summer, around 400km of subsea cables will then be stretched across 20 JAMES GLOSSOP FOR THE TIMES Brendan Dick, Director of BT Scotland, emphasises the opportunity for a joined-up approach Those in government and business really do understand that to compete globally you must have digital connectivity points to the islands. This will be a huge task in a challenging environment, but what it will achieve will be measured in how the communities that will benefit then realise the potential. “This will be a journey of some years,” says Dick. “This is phase one, and what will be really interesting, where there’s a hunger for more connectivity in more rural parts, is how people recognise this as an opportunity not just locally, but internationally, to transform how they gain value from it. “The vast majority will get high speeds, but how to get this to the last few homes and businesses is a journey that will take time. Yet in these areas digital access can be particularly important, not just for business, but also for other reasons such as learning. “The network is designed to be open to the whole communications industry, and the UK has one of the most competitive retail communications markets in the world. Fundamentally, what is going to drive the exploitation of this capability are the hundreds of providers selling services and applications at very competitive prices, and as prices drop the market grows. “The upload speeds are going to be higher and guarantee a better service, which is particularly important not just for social media, and the creative industries, but also for video interaction and business tools. Digital delivery is increasingly an issue in the area of health, too, and in education. So in terms of delivering better services to people in our communities, the pressure on public bodies to drive efficiency is strong, and so the circle is back to participation. “As digital platforms are changing how we deliver these fundamental services, issues such as the low take-up in areas of deprivation, which are well served by infrastructure, shows the hard part is understanding why. Is it to do with the numbers of older people or poverty or both? Understanding this is very important for taking Scotland to the next level in terms of a society that is inclusive. “BT, a company with a history of having employees living throughout our Scottish communities, strongly believes it has a place in answering this. We need to listen to hard evidence, and to think more holistically about infrastructure. We have an additional role to help make Scotland successful. For BT there is a genuine desire to be part of delivering that future for Scotland and the UK, it’s part of our legacy, and we’re a big part of the engine driving this forward. “The aspiration for 2020 is just the start, and here in Scotland, a country with a history steeped in innovation, there is now a great opportunity to take us to another level.”
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