Research contract management for University of Bristol

Introduction

University of Bristol accelerates research contract workflows with a secure, digital case management platform

Case metrics

Key statistics

40%

faster contract turnaround

100%

of contracts now digitally archived

60%

reduction in back-and-forth communication errors

The challenge

Improving case management and compliance for research and legal services

Managing research contracts at a leading global university is a high-stakes, high-complexity operation. At the University of Bristol (UoB), the Research and Enterprise Development (RED) team, in collaboration with Financial Services, faced significant administrative friction while managing pre-award contract negotiations. Their legacy systems, relying heavily on Outlook, spreadsheets, and shared drives, were not built to handle the scale, sensitivity, or compliance requirements of modern research contracting.

RED’s challenge was twofold: firstly, to streamline multi-party negotiations across funders, institutions, and academic departments; and secondly, to ensure all data, terms, and correspondence were traceable and secure. The Secretary’s Office (SecO), which advises on legal and commercial matters across the university, also needed a better way to manage its growing legal caseload and provide structured management information for reporting.

“The implementation of F2 not only improved the system our team uses, it provided an opportunity for teams across the university to examine and understand processes which had been built organically over many years in collaboration with cBrain.”

Tom Morgan

F2 Service Owner at University of Bristol

The solution

A configurable, centralized platform for fast, compliant research contracting

cBrain worked closely with UoB to implement its fully integrated F2 digital platform, designed specifically for complex government and public sector workflows. The solution replaced siloed systems with a unified case management framework tailored to RED and SecO processes.

Using F2, UoB digitized contract case templates, checklists, and communications. Key contract metadata is now merged automatically into document templates, improving quality and reducing drafting errors. Email integrations allow users to capture negotiation threads directly into the case file. With full audit trails, version history, and secure access controls, legal compliance and traceability are built into the workflow.

Implementation followed an agile, user-led approach: service “super-users” helped configure the platform to reflect real-life contracting processes, not idealized blueprints. The university’s IT services supported integrations with authentication systems and used REST APIs to pull academic and project data into F2.

The result

Faster contracting, reduced risk, and future-ready compliance

With the F2 platform in place, RED and SecO now manage all research contract negotiations through a single, auditable system. Turnaround time for contract finalization has dropped significantly thanks to auto-merged templates and checklist-driven workflows. Administrative duplication has been eliminated, and the risk of non-compliance reduced through automated logging and secure document storage.

The legal team benefits from clear visibility into case status, better workload planning, and instant access to contract history and communication logs. Beyond efficiency, F2 has given the University of Bristol a scalable framework for future digital transformation across other research governance areas.

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