A day managing Pentlands Science Park ...
DAY IN THE LIFE
Pentlands Science Park Midlothian , Scotland , UK
Biography George ( centre ) is a Chartered Surveyor who had a 25 year career in the coal mining industry and has been Park Manager at Pentlands since January 2001 . Currently Vice- Chair of UKSPA , he has served on the Board for nine years and also Chairs the Scottish UKSPA Group
George Walker
A day managing Pentlands Science Park ...
FEB
02
" Another bright but cold day as I arrive at the Park . I always count myself lucky to work in such a lovely environment . It ’ s budget time again , so a few hours are spent with finance colleagues predicting occupancy , revenues , calculating service charge budgets and discussing capital expenditure priorities for the year ahead . Research laboratories and animal facilities are heavily engineered and expensive to run , so investment in replacement energy-efficient plant is critical to controlling costs ."
PEOPLE FIRST " Later , we meet with an existing tenant interested in leasing an additional laboratory unit . We agree rental terms and fit-out to enable its intended use .
Lenny , our Facilities Manager , will retire at the end of March and his successor , Jacqui , started with us in January . She has been shadowing Lenny for a couple of months . Lunch time is spent around the table in my office with Lenny , Jacqui and Angie ( our Finance Officer ). As we eat our soup we further Jacqui ’ s science park education and , generally , put the world to rights ."
2017 is Rating Revaluation year in Scotland
PLAN AND PREP " After lunch , we discuss with Bioservices plans to construct a new pig unit within the farm accommodation . This is of increasing importance , both for the Research Institute and also for our own CRO which undertakes studies for its many clients . Pig models offer high similarity to human models and are valuable in researching human infectious diseases .
2017 is Rating Revaluation year in Scotland ( 2010 was the previous revaluation ) and the proposed values have appeared on the Assessor ’ s website . Generally a three per cent increase but a few will require investigating and probable appeal . Tomorrow I am hosting the Midlothian Community Planning meeting so my final act of the day is a wee bit of prep for that . The science base here is an important economic driver for Midlothian ."
PARTY LAST " Then I ( literally ) squeeze into my penguin suit and it ’ s off to the Annual Scottish Life Sciences Dinner in Edinburgh . An enjoyable night as two of our tenants – TC Biopharm and BioReliance – win Awards . A late night follows , with good chat and a few glasses of wine . It ’ s been a good day and we ’ ll do it all again tomorrow !" ■
82 | UKSPA breakthrough | SPRING 2017