Why I work here - a day in the life of a member of admin/support staff 

When piles of letters turn up on our desks every morning, most of us give little thought to how they got there.  The main hub of postal activity is at the South Kensington Campus where Postal worker Eddie Da Silva works as part of a team of 14 staff.

Their shifts begin at 7.30 when the mail is delivered to the Huxley Building basement by Royal Mail. All parcels and packages are X-rayed before being sorted by building, department and individual names. Within two hours, post is being delivered around the campus, some via buildings’ receptions, others to individuals’ pigeonholes. A second incoming delivery is dealt with at similar speed during early afternoon. As well as incoming mail, outgoing mail addressed to Imperial’s various campuses and destinations all over the world forms a big chunk of Eddie and the team’s work. At South Kensington, they collect from buildings three times a day—in November 2007 alone, nearly 40,000 items were posted out from South Kensington, weighing a total of more than 3,772 kilograms. The total postage cost for the campus during 2007 was over £209,000, including inland, airmail, special and recorded deliveries.

A large science university such as Imperial has some weird and wonderful deliveries, but
Eddie and the team are fully trained in security risks associated with mail.  Over the past year, there has been one occasion when the Bomb Squad had to be called to the South Kensington Campus, but that turned out to be a false alarm over an unexpected delivery of a water filter.

As well as the team at South Kensington, there are two postal workers at the Hammersmith Campus, one at Charing Cross and one at St Mary’s. Security Services handle mail at the Silwood and Wye Campuses.