Download the review: Foundation Review 2015.pdf.
In our second year of operation we concentrated on our grant-making activities, including growing relationships with beneficiaries and others in the charitable sector. The Foundation’s income for the year was £19.5 million and we awarded grants totalling £12.7 million; a £10 million grant was awarded just after the year end to the Alan Turing Institute for the engineering applications of big data. Other highlights from the year include committing £9 million of grants for nanotechnology research and education; publishing a foresight review on big data and commissioning two more reviews; and funding UK skills shortage research by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng).
Our charitable work is made possible by the success of our trading arm, Lloyd’s Register Group Ltd (LR), which generates much of our income; in the year 2014/15 LR made an £11.5 million donation to the Foundation. The trading activities of LR also contribute to the charitable purpose of the Foundation in relation to the enhancement of the safety of life and property, as LR’s services help its clients to ensure the quality construction and operation of critical infrastructure. We highlight a few of these activities in our review.
“2014/15 has been an exciting and impactful year for the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. We’ve been focused on turning our strategy into practice and, in the process, generating benefits for society in line with our charitable aims.
“A unique feature of the Foundation is that we are able to focus on the long term because of our governance structure and the assets we own. In many cases we work with our grants community to build long-term relationships, working together on the challenges facing modern society. This means our funding can go into tackling root problems rather than just alleviating the symptoms. It also means that our grants can be significant, both in terms of their value and duration.” Professor Richard Clegg, MD of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation.
In the Foundation Review 2015
The contents include some facts and figures to illustrate our impact in 2014/15, reports from the Chairman and Managing Director and a look at our progress under our four strategic themes:
1. Supporting excellent scientific research
The review outlines how we are increasingly taking a directed approach to research funding and key activities in the year. We fund 19 research programmes across 39 institutions around the world covering a range of subjects including transport safety, ship design, energy and water security. In addition, we have several growing partnerships with other institutions through the UK’s National Structural Integrity Research Centre, to which we have awarded a large grant.
2. Accelerating the application of research
Highlights under this theme include the publication of the Foresight review of big data and announcement of a conditional grant offer of £10 million over five years to support research by the Alan Turing Institute on engineering applications of big data.
3. Promoting safety and public understanding of risk
October 2014 saw the beginning of the Foundation’s Heritage and Education Centre (HEC) pilot digitisation project of a small part of its extensive archives, to put it to work for educational purposes. In the year the HEC also answered over 13,000 enquiries from business, students, academia, institutions and members of the general public and has supported authors and shipping company anniversaries, helping to widen maritime engineering and scientific knowledge. Over 800 people downloaded the Foundation’s first two foresight reviews on nanotechnology and big data.
4. Advancing skills and education
To meet our objective of inspiring the next generation we are particularly addressing the UK’s critical skills shortage in engineering and during the year we funded a project by the RAEng to undertake a mapping of the UK STEM landscape and gap analysis, aiming to achieve a better understanding of the sector and supporting the wider STEM community. The review also reports on some significant successes aligned with our strategy, some associated with relatively small grants.
To download the review click here.