Covering the Insurance Department

The Project Manager and Insurance Office describe the change as a simple thing but one that has made life so much easier for all the staff who use it. For Insurance Manager Geraldine Halliday, it was her first time collaborating with Project Services.

When you travel for the University you have to arrange insurance yourself, it's not automatic. Staff and students can organise their own insurance independently, but a big advantage of University of Edinburgh provided cover is that it is now free. Whether for field trips, conferences and such like, wherever they travel, the University insures them.

What Project Services have now done is to develop a step by step online form that takes people through all the information they need to provide. The information is also validated as it’s filled in so no time is wasted chasing people up anymore for missing information as used to happen with the old system.

We've had students away in Paris, Tunia and Instanbul when there's been trouble in those places

Geraldine Halliday

The system will alert anyone applying for insurance cover for travel to a hazardous country about the extra checks they have to undergo.

Different modes of entry by applicants made it difficult to get useful data out of the old system, but for instance, now you can only apply using your university email address. This makes the insurance database easily searchable and gives much better data of who’s away and who’s insured.