The Marine Facilities Planning allow scientists to apply to use marine facilities from the NERC, NIOZ, GEOMAR and CSIC. The Scientist Portal is designed for scientists to complete online applications to access ships and equipment to support their science projects. The Scientist Portal is where their applications and equipment can be managed from application stage through to delivery. Once a scientist has created an application within the Portal a ‘workflow’ will be generated to support the project management of the application through its delivery cycle. The workflow identifies a series of steps and responsibilities that will guide the scientist through the process from application stage, through to delivery and post-cruise reporting. The Project Management module is integrated across the MFP system, so when a scientist creates a new application on the Scientist Portal for access to ship time or equipment, the application (with its unique identifier) will be visible in the Project Management module, showing its current planning stage and status. The Project Management module creates a ‘workflow’ for each application to ensure all planning and delivery requirements are managed and recorded. When a particular step in the workflow is completed, the status of the application is updated moving the application onto the next step. When the application is added to the cruise program ‘milestones’ and ‘due dates’ for specific steps in the workflow will be generated automatically with automatics email alerts sent to key stakeholders in the project.
