Bringing together education, development and knowledge

What is the Virtual University?
The BAE Systems Virtual University (VU) is an umbrella organisation that brings together education, development and knowledge from across the company. It establishes partnerships with education, academia and the wider business community to ensure that the company is recognised as a leader in UK industry and a forward thinker when it comes to capability and individual development.

What does it do?
There are four main strands of Virtual University activity:

Education
BAE Systems is committed to working in partnership with schools, colleges and universities, both to help support them and ensure the company has enough engineers and scientists to meet its future needs. We have links with over 700 schools across the UK and an active schools programme which includes a special schools roadshow delivered to schools close to our major sites. We provide free online resources for teachers and pupils at www.baesystems.com/education . All our work is underpinned by the efforts of our 200 plus Ambassadors who visit local schools to support engineering related activities. We work closely with the UK Government, our biggest customer, for whom investment in education and the skills of our young people is a top priority.

University Partnerships
Our large organisation has many synergistic requirements to be addressed in the university sector. The requirements relate to preparing a range of competitive products, processes and capabilities for future markets. The associated customer and company stakeholder base drives a broad spectrum of needs in science, engineering and business processes. The university partnership programme provides a framework to align stakeholder interests with the best academic groups, our Primary Partners. Approximately fifty are needed to cover our requirements. Within this framework our businesses identify multi-disciplinary Strategic Requirements Domains to capture priorities for research and education and to develop relevant recruitment pools. The requirements in each domain are addressed by a network of primary partners and are coordinated by a Strategic Partner with knowledge across the domain. In partnership with EPSRC, large-scale integrated research programmes are established to underpin each domain. The overall approach of stakeholder consultation, alignment and integration of requirements, skills and funding brings benefit and leverage to all stakeholders.

Capability Development
Strategically, the VU contributes to the development of capability in the functions. This is a hugely important part of the VU's work, and puts it in touch with every part of the BAE Systems business. The VU helps co-ordinate the development of company capability and assists in the formulation of training strategies, bringing together the diverse needs of the business.

e-learning / Knowledge Management
The VU is a gateway to know how; a dynamic library of information that can be accessed by individuals from across BAE Systems. The VU recognises that the growth of e-learning and the use of internet based knowledge management tools is vital. The VU plays a major role in collecting and making available best practice and examples of excellence from across the company. It has become a conduit for good ideas that might otherwise never be shared company-wide.