At the outset of lockdown back in March 2020, our Event Durham Team colleagues were redeployed to create, staff and run the new Incident Control Centre (ICC).
As well as the fresh experience of working from home and getting to grips with new technology, new processes were developed for the completely different role in the ICC. The team had phones installed at home and took calls on the Covid hotline, mainly from people feeling the stress of lockdown, and a new email account was created for all incoming queries.
The team have dealt with nearly 400 calls and over 12,000 emails since its creation.
Since then the ICC has dealt with numerous things including daily reporting of test results; track and trace calls to positive student cases; coordinating students returning to collect belongings after being sent home for Easter 2020; and dealing with outbreaks in Colleges by supporting the College teams.
The team worked closely with the International Office on airport pick-ups when students arrived in October and January and continued to respond to complaints from members of the public about student behaviour.
Members of the ICC supported the University wherever they could, from working on receptions at John Snow and South Colleges; working in Admissions when the A-level results Government turnaround took place; taking Switchboard calls when they were busy; and working with Modern Foreign Languages and Culture to help with their admissions queries.
All calls and emails to ICC were logged and the team have dealt with nearly 400 calls and over 12,000 emails since its creation. The busiest time was October 2020 when the largest outbreaks occurred and nearly 600 emails a day were arriving in the inbox.
Alongside the ICC work, the team continued with their usual tasks, dealing with postponed/cancelled events, planning ahead for when conferences can be held in person, and working with CIS on the website migration and a new online registration system for events.
They have created Zoom ‘show rounds’ for weddings and learning how to run events virtually. The team continues to be a force to be reckoned with.