Newsmail #41, 2022-11-11

Dear all,

This week we have seen a lot of action relating to the re-organization of the KTH support organization, discussions regarding premises, increased costs for rent and other inflation-related worries. On Monday, all the heads of departments met with heads of schools to propose how the new support organization should meet our needs for financial reporting, budgets and follow-ups etc. Departments at KTH range in sizes, from 35 people to 300, and it’s interesting to see how different we all are. I anyhow feel confident that there is a lot of interest from the KTH management to reshape the support organization so that our needs are in focus.

The discussions on KTH premises (rent etc) have gone into crisis-mode, meaning, the cost for rent has increased so much so that people in control classify this as a crisis. It’s even so that the rent of our part of our house has increased beyond what we paid before we left the ground floor, so it’s apparent that this is not sustainable. The only realistic solution is that KTH will return a number of entire buildings back to Akademiska Hus, and these changes will affect the entire organization. Since we were early to adapt in our building I believe the chances are very high that we can keep our building, but it’s very likely that we will welcome new people on the ground floor, and that perhaps we will need to leave even more offices to others to accommodate other departments in the future.

This week we have met with the steering group for the workshop and prototyping center, and we’ll continue on Monday, to continue the transformation of the activities into a support organization for MMK that we can use for teaching and research. There is a lot of moving around in the building now, but it’s very nice to see transformation of the facilities. Don’t hesitate to visit and look at the changes.

Best,

Martin