As a site you should avoid building research operations systems that results in studies operating as silos. It is advisable for sites to adopt a common purpose research operational system that enables and enhances integration of project operations, and to capitalize on economies of scale in terms of human, financial and infrastructural resources. It is also important to ensure that the line management of research operations staff is at site level rather than at an individual study level, so that you could have a structure that is integrative and able to retain critical operational human resources beyond the life span of an individual study. In order to allow for the study Principal Investigators to retain control over their study implementation activities you need to provide them an opportunity to perform a horizontal scientific management. It will be through this horizontal scientific management line that the Principal Investigator, together with the appropriate mixture of staff from different research operations functional areas forms a study team.

An example of the research operations matrix system established by the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies site can be found here.