UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) – from DOBs to live dashboards and governed AI workflows

Overview

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) operates major research and innovation campuses at Harwell and Daresbury.

This matters because these are not “single-building” sites. They are busy, high-importance research environments supporting national facilities and large communities of staff, contractors and visiting researchers.

The locations: Two national laboratories with distinct operational patterns

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Harwell Science and Innovation Campus (Oxfordshire)

RAL is one of UKRI’s flagship national laboratories, based at the Harwell campus. It is home to major science capability including the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, a world-leading centre for neutron and muon research. Harwell is also home to Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron. RAL’s Technology Department delivers large scientific instruments and multidisciplinary engineering to support national and international programmes.

Daresbury Laboratory, Sci-Tech Daresbury (Cheshire)

Daresbury Laboratory is located at the Sci-Tech Daresbury campus and is internationally recognised for scientific excellence across fields “ranging from nuclear physics to supercomputing”. It also hosts innovation-oriented facilities such as the Innovations Technology Access Centre (I-TAC), providing space and support for start-ups, SMEs and R&D teams.

The challenge: High volume records without a single “truth”

Across two large campuses, UKRI needed to:

• Capture incidents and events consistently and at pace

• Maintain reliable daily occurrence book entries

• Evidence activity and performance without adding admin burden

• Turn operational records into timely visibility for supervisors and stakeholders

As volumes increase, manual reporting and fragmented logs create delay, inconsistency and reduced confidence in metrics.

The solution: SIRV as the operational system of record, then tailored to fit

SIRV was implemented as the shared platform for:

• incident and event reporting

• daily occurrence book entries

• staff activity and performance capture

Following deployment, the product was iteratively tailored to UKRI requirements, including bespoke development work to match on-site ways of working and reporting expectations.

Live dashboard: Co-designed and built for operational visibility

With core record keeping stabilised, UKRI moved into co-design of a live dashboard visualisation, and that dashboard was built to support day-to-day oversight and reporting rhythms.

This shifted SIRV from “capturing records” to “seeing the estate” in near real time, using the same underlying data and definitions across both sites.

The results: Faster reporting, stronger consistency, better oversight

• 50% reduction in time spent on reporting.
• Tens of thousands of operational records captured in a consistent structure.
• Improved visibility of what happened, what was done, and who was active, without splitting information across separate tools.

Client testimonial

SIRV has become a dependable system of record for our day-to-day operations across our UKRI sites. It is reliable in use, it supports consistent reporting, and it gives us confidence that incidents, events and occurrence book entries are captured properly and can be retrieved quickly when we need them. The SIRV team have been consistently responsive and practical to work with, adapting the platform to our operational requirements and delivering improvements without disruption. We are particularly excited about the next phase, where governed AI will help us strengthen compliance workflows and reduce administration further, while maintaining the auditability and control we need in this environment.

– Gert Kilian | Security Manager | Science and Technology Facilities Council | UK Research and Innovation

What is next: AI Governed Sprint for on-site staff compliance

UKRI has agreed an AI Governed Sprint to deliver a workflow focused on on-site staff compliance.

The intent is “governed automation” rather than a black box:

• Policy  and template aware checks for completeness

• Transparent routing and escalation

• Evidence-linked outputs (what the AI used, and why)

• Clear audit trails suitable for high-importance environments

Takeaway

SIRV helped UKRI modernise operational record keeping across two national laboratories, cut reporting time in half, and convert high-volume logs into live visibility creating the foundation for governed AI workflows in compliance.

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