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A recent report has highlighted the impact that Diamond Light Source has made to the science and academic community which in turn has benefitted industry and society.
The National Audit Office (NAO) published their findings in ‘Lessons Learned: Delivering value from government investment in major projects’ in February 2024. The report examined how several projects achieved value and Diamond was the leading light amongst the case studies.
Value was defined as the difference projects can make to citizens, service users or the environment. Value was determined on how projects added value to stakeholders and the public beyond the original benefits identified in the original business case. It was noted that the potential value from a project can go beyond the value that as originally intended or expected. Diamond exemplified this definition of value in terms of public spending.
The intended aim of Diamond was to provide world-class facilities for scientist from universities and industry, both in the UK and internationally to advance science knowledge in virtually all fields of research. Further to this, its establishment would support the UK skills agenda in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), as well as the increased awareness of these subjects in everyday lives.
The significant value of Diamond is well recognised in the report; more than 14,000 scientists have used the facility since it began operations, researchers have published over 10,000 articles in peer-reviewed journals and patents citing Diamond are collectively valued at over £10 billion.
The NAO report found that Diamond is an important piece of UK national infrastructure, benefitting science, academia and wider society, highlighting the Covid-19 research conducted at facility in 2020.
Furthermore, Diamond has a clear sense of the value it is seeking to achieve, which aligns with the incentives of stakeholders, including its users.
The report noted that Diamond has a strong culture and focus on measuring its impact, which is also used as part of its public communications which raises the visibility of its work.
Because of this, Diamond has demonstrated how the value from a project can be wider than originally anticipated. Being able to demonstrate success through monitoring and evaluations has led to the funders approving a successor project, Diamond-II.
Lessons Learned: Delivering value from government investment in major projects was published in February 2024 by the National Audit Office (NAO), the UK’s independent public spending watchdog. The remit of the report was to examine how projects achieve value to see what lessons there are for other projects. The office used six projects that received public funding which were reported on during earlier phases of their lifecycle. These included the Millennium Dome, High Speed 1, the BBC’s move to Salford, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Hartree Centre and Diamond Light Source. The evidence base included interviews with a variety of stakeholders - those involved in delivering projects, those now involved in operating assets, sponsor bodies and other stakeholders. They also reviewed publicly available evaluations of the projects along with documents provided by the organisations. They also conducted interviews with government officials, government bodies as well as panel discussions. www.nao.org.uk
Diamond Light Source provides industrial and academic user communities with access to state-of-the-art analytical tools to enable world-changing science. Shaped like a huge ring, it works like a giant microscope, accelerating electrons to near light speeds, to produce a light 10 billion times brighter than the sun, which is then directed off into 34 laboratories known as beamlines. In addition to these, Diamond offers access to several integrated laboratories including the world-class Electron Bio-imaging Centre (eBIC) and the Electron Physical Science Imaging Centre (ePSIC).
Diamond serves as an agent of change, addressing 21st century challenges such as disease, clean energy, food security and more. Since operations started, more than 16,000 researchers from both academia and industry have used Diamond to conduct experiments, with the support of approximately 760 world-class staff. Almost 12,000 scientific articles have been published by our users and scientists.
Funded by the UK Government through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and by the Wellcome, Diamond is one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world, and its pioneering capabilities are helping to keep the UK at the forefront of scientific research.
Diamond was set-up as an independent not for profit company through a joint venture, between the UKRI’s Science and Technology Facilities Council and one of the world’s largest biomedical charities, the Wellcome Trust - each respectively owning 86% and 14% of the shareholding. www.diamond.ac.uk
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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Harwell Science & Innovation Campus
Didcot
Oxfordshire
OX11 0DE
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