As is known, all PhD-candidates funded by the University have a four-year employment contract, where 25 % of the employment is allocated mandatory duty work. This work has to be planned each year in collaboration with supervisor(s) and employer. The faculty’s and the institutes’ executive officers for research education have reviewed this practice. It turns out that the amount of work time spent on duty work differs a lot between the PhD-candidates.  Currently, almost 50 PhD-candidates at K2 are UiB-funded, and when considering the fact that each of these PhD-candidates in theory should spend one whole year on duty work, we are talking about nearly 50 man-years available at the department’s disposal. Thus we should aim for a good structure in the organization of duty work so that this resource is utilized optimally.

Examples of actions discussed:

• All UiB-funded candidates and their supervisors must inform executive officer for research education about planned duty work ahead of each year.
• All scientific employees may, in addition, ahead of each semester submit tasks they wish to recruit PhD-candidates for, but where they have not yet obtained any.  This includes teaching tasks, communications work, conference/seminar organization, database work, supervision of Master students, etc.
• All new UiB-funded PhD-candidates will, together with their principal supervisor, be called inn for a short meeting regarding planning of duty work with executive officer for research education and head of research as soon as application for admission to the PhD-programme has been submitted.

Roland