Dear all,

As everyone is aware, we provide a lot of YNiC technician operator cover whilst also training YNiC users to be operators themselves. This works well for everyone as it balances workloads for YNiC technicians and provides more flexibity in scanning for those users who are trained to be an operator.

Part of the operator training process requires the trainee to attend and scan across multiple sessions to ensure they are of the standard we expect before being 'signed off'. There is no official policy on this, but as a centre we would expect those who are going through this process to attend as many sessions as possible on their lab projects to speed up the training process. On a few occasions recently, trainees have not been scanning on projects run by their labs (e.g., for MSc projects), which increases workload for YNiC technicians.

I am therefore emailing to ask everyone to try to engage with training as much as possible. If a project is running in the lab and you are being trained, please try to ensure you are attending as many of these sessions as you can. This is of benefit for yourself and the YNiC staff, and ensures we are providing operator cover more equitably across labs.

As always, if there are circumstances that might this difficult, come to talk to us and we will do our best to help and support you. Finally, if you are unsure about the above and how it relates to you or members of your lab, again please come and talk to us.

Best wishes, Aidan