2019JAN

Science with and for SocietySmart, green and integrated transport

Food securityEuropean Research Council (ERC)

Where to start?

JANSo, you want a project.

1

2

3

4

1

23

4

What if you don’t succeed? Gain as much information as possible from the evaluation outcome. Beyond disappointment, identify areas of improvement and strong points; study if the work done can be of use for a resubmission or for building a new project proposal for a different call.

Analyze your full research portfolio with your team and trusted others.

Search the funding landscape with an open mind: go beyond what is obviously related to your work. Include all calls, even those that a priori seem impossible to win.Prioritize the list of calls, considering: deadlines; eligibility criteria; scope; network required

Before you get to action, plan! Think of what you have, what you are missing, liaise with the funding agency, make a calendar and follow it! And then… Go for it! ;)

2019FEBAnalyze your full research portfolio with your team and trusted others.

Search the funding landscape with an open mind: go beyond what is obviously related to your work. Include all calls, even those that a priori seem impossible to win.Prioritize the list of calls, considering: deadlines; eligibility criteria; scope; network required

Before you get to action, plan! Think of what you have, what you are missing, liaise with the funding agency, make a calendar and follow it! And then… Go for it! ;)

Secure, clean and efficient energySmart, green and integrated transport

European Research Council (ERC)Climate action

FEBWhere to find m

y partners?

You and your Lab

Your Institution

Your closest

collaborators

Contacts of your closest collaborators

Gurus and reference labs in the field

of interest

The Unknown: EU search engines, brokerage events,

networking meetings

2019MAR

Europe in a changing world

proposal and not dieChecklist to write a

Get familiar with the submission tools

Carefully read the call requirements: check scope, consortium, impact, funding, deadlines Make sure to use the right templates! And to comply with lengths and formats as well! Establish a clear calendar, with sufficient time ahead… and follow it! If you develop the proposal with a team, clearly define it and assign roles Think of using a consortium NDA to ensure commitment, trust and confidentiality A proposal kick-off meeting is good to align perceptions, incorporate suggestions, and manage expectations. Carefully design your project: strategically, operationally and financially… with your partners but importantly with your institution! Regular updates on progress help maintain momentum and ensure timely responses Transparency and objectivity empower your coordinator role Put pressure only when needed, pushing too far too often can burn your resources down too soon

If you still think it is worth trying but you feel overwhelmed by the task, you should get help. It is ok! And to have a management partner can be a project asset

2019APRGet familiar with the submission tools

Carefully read the call requirements: check scope, consortium, impact, funding, deadlines Make sure to use the right templates! And to comply with lengths and formats as well! Establish a clear calendar, with sufficient time ahead… and follow it! If you develop the proposal with a team, clearly define it and assign roles Think of using a consortium NDA to ensure commitment, trust and confidentiality A proposal kick-off meeting is good to align perceptions, incorporate suggestions, and manage expectations. Carefully design your project: strategically, operationally and financially… with your partners but importantly with your institution! Regular updates on progress help maintain momentum and ensure timely responses Transparency and objectivity empower your coordinator role Put pressure only when needed, pushing too far too often can burn your resources down too soon

Science with and for SocietySecure, clean and efficient energy

Health, demographic change and wellbeingSmart, green and integrated transport

APR Project

WP2

...

WPn

WP1Task 1

Task 1

Task 1

Task 1

Task 2

Task 2

Task 2

Task 3

Task 3

Task 4 Task 5

To build a solid project …

The project structure requires a great level of detail, and the alignment between work packages and with deliverables, milestones and budget.You can greatly benefit from starting with a thought-through construction of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)*: think of it as a hierarchical graphical representation of the project, either vertical or horizontal, with a breakdown going from complex and general to simpler, specific and manageable.When building it remember :

Consistency: Align your work packages, and include all work defined in the scope in the form of tasks distributed in those work packages.

Rule out the overlap between work packages, avoid duplications of tasks and miscommunications about responsibility and authority amongst partners.

Focus on the result of the work, i.e. deliverables, and make sure to include them all according to scope, associating them to the corresponding WPs/tasks. Use them to check if your WBS is complete

WBS: a hierarchical scope breakdown into manageable pieces (work packages and tasks), to be

undertaken by teams, in order to generate the deliverables and accomplish the objectives

2019MAY

MAY the money!Show me

Building a budget with a group of partners is not always an easy task. Moreover, if you know you have an upper limit to match and a set of rules and administrative require-ments to fulfil.

Some ideas:

Avoid political reasons or favours due to distribute the budget. This can be a serious threat to the project management, undermine your authority, and may have little to nothing to do with the actual work. Both bottom-up and top-down approaches have drawbacks. Try to be most objective: relate budget to work and roles assigned to partners according to WPs and tasks defined in your WBS. A matrix can help you visualize effort and roles assigned. Define personnel costs based on the matrix distribution: More work or more responsibility equals more effort / budget assigned. Partners doing same work have same effort / similar budget. Avoid negotiating totals or percentages. Rather, get the totals by adding the budget building blocks: personnel (derived from efforts), reagents, travel, publica-tions, subcontracting, overheads, etc. Establish a dialogue, be transparent about criteria used, and open to partners’ needs and requests. Adjust to a certain degree so that all feel comfortable with budget assigned.

2019JUN

JUN don’t be afraid!An audit may come,

Yes, you will have to present an audit certification if total direct costs or unit costs reimbursed to your institution exceed 325 000 euro in total, not including overheads or indirect costs (it is called Certificate on Financial Statements, CFS). It is submitted via the coordinator and along the final report, so at the end of the project! Also, the EU can audit any project you have been awarded during its execution and up to 2 years after its completion. So, you have to be prepared not scared. Some tips:

The Commission has a myriad of resources available with regards audits: guideli-nes, forms, methodologies, FAQs, … Check them! They are informative and useful Meet with your administration to ensure your institution complies with the EU requirements in terms of use of funds and expenditure control. If not, work together to adapt them and comply! Maintain a constant dialogue with your administration with regards project progress and reporting, to be mutually informed and to adequately align technical and financial reports. Keep a complete record of all what has been reported. Be clear about who and how records of expenditure and reporting are kept, so that when the audit comes you have all documents ready If you are required to submit a CFS it will be once the project is over! So it is useful to add to the archives a written statement of the reporting reasoning and the specific aspects to remember.

2019JUL

The project structure requires a great level of detail, and the alignment between work packages and with deliverables, milestones and budget.You can greatly benefit from starting with a thought-through construction of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)*: think of it as a hierarchical graphical representation of the project, either vertical or horizontal, with a breakdown going from complex and general to simpler, specific and manageable.When building it remember :

Consistency: Align your work packages, and include all work defined in the scope in the form of tasks distributed in those work packages.

Rule out the overlap between work packages, avoid duplications of tasks and miscommunications about responsibility and authority amongst partners.

Focus on the result of the work, i.e. deliverables, and make sure to include them all according to scope, associating them to the corresponding WPs/tasks. Use them to check if your WBS is complete

WBS: a hierarchical scope breakdown into manageable pieces (work packages and tasks), to be

undertaken by teams, in order to generate the deliverables and accomplish the objectives

Yes, you will have to present an audit certification if total direct costs or unit costs reimbursed to your institution exceed 325 000 euro in total, not including overheads or indirect costs (it is called Certificate on Financial Statements, CFS). It is submitted via the coordinator and along the final report, so at the end of the project! Also, the EU can audit any project you have been awarded during its execution and up to 2 years after its completion. So, you have to be prepared not scared. Some tips:

The Commission has a myriad of resources available with regards audits: guideli-nes, forms, methodologies, FAQs, … Check them! They are informative and useful Meet with your administration to ensure your institution complies with the EU requirements in terms of use of funds and expenditure control. If not, work together to adapt them and comply! Maintain a constant dialogue with your administration with regards project progress and reporting, to be mutually informed and to adequately align technical and financial reports. Keep a complete record of all what has been reported. Be clear about who and how records of expenditure and reporting are kept, so that when the audit comes you have all documents ready If you are required to submit a CFS it will be once the project is over! So it is useful to add to the archives a written statement of the reporting reasoning and the specific aspects to remember.

JUL your results survive?How to make

TRL1 TRL2 TRL3 TRL4 TRL5 TRL6 TRL7 TRL8 TRL9

Basic Research

Feasibility

Discovery / Concept definition

Experimental proof of concept

Tech controlledDemo

System final verification

Demonstration

Operational DeploymentApplied Development

Laboratoryvalidation

Operational environment Demo

Commercialdeployment

Remember and use the Technology Readiness Level scale:

Define the TRL level in which your project starts and ends, that will give an overview of the resources and time required to reach the market.

This will help you identify your project needs in terms of further development, exploitation and results’ IPR and establish the best strategy to respond. If you don’t have expertise in house, consider the contribution of the companies or SMEs in your consortium, and -if none or additionally- think of the inclusion of an expert in your Scientific Advisory Board.

2019AUG

Secure societiesSecure, clean and efficient energy

your projects’ impactHow to maximize

Don’t forget or ignore any of these three dimensions if you want to maximize the impact of your project.

Carefully assess them at the proposal stage and make a concrete plan for project execution.

There is no single solution for all projects but must adapt to each case, to find the right formula.

The IPR helpdesk* has very useful resources that help you differentiate and define each dimension in more detail, and they also have a help line ;)

*https://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/

Communication: of the project and its results to

a all concerned audiences

Exploitation: use of the zzresults for further research or for creating and marketing

a product or service

Dissemination: of the results by appropriate

means to those audiences that can use them

2019SEP

Secure, clean and efficient energyClimate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials

SEPTry to consider this approach when working in your proposal (like putting an RRI pair of glasses) and assess if you are correctly including it. Some examples to think about: consortium composition; impact of project outcomes; stakeholders to consider in your communication strategy; trainings if any; ethics; gender equality; accessibility to your results.

Responsible Research and Innovation…sorry, what?

Science Education

RRI ComponentsEthics

Gender equality

Governance

Open access

Public engagement

ResearchCommunity

Societalactors

Areas

PolicyMakers

Business &Industry

Civil SocietyOrganisations

EducationCommunity

RRI is an approach promoted by the EC to generate a dialogue between the different societal actors and get them to work together during the research and innovation process, with the ultimate goal of better aligning the R&I outcomes to the values, needs and expectations of society.

2019OCT

OCTSurely your proposal is well thought, well documented, and considers all relevant aspects… but what if? That is the thinking behind risk assessment and the associated risk management.

Assessment: You should consider all the key aspects in the project that may have an impact on the objectives’ consecution – whether it is positive or negative - (risks) and rank them. To rank the risks, you can use numeric scales for different variables such as: relevance (how serious the risk is for the project consecution), probability (how likely is it to happen), and proximity (when could it happen) or a symbolic representation (traffic light: red, orange/yellow; green). Risks should also have an owner (who is responsible for monitoring and responding) that can vary from one to another.

Management: You should be able to plan how to prevent a risk to happen (contingency plan) and plan for an alternative if- in spite of your contingencies- the risk happens anyway (mitigation plan). You should have a method defined to identify arising risks in the project, and at least a person responsible for the risk registry generation and maintenance.

prepare for the worstHope for the best…

2019NOV

NOVmanage the unmanageable?How to

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

EXECUTIVE BOARD PROJECT COORDINATOR (PC)

Strategic advisory board

Exploitation Board / Industrial Advisory Board

Ethics Committee

PM support

Review decision & coordination level

Operationallevel

WP1 WP2 ... WPn

Several partners from different countries, working remotely, each one with its own motivations, expectations, particularities and culture. How can one manage such a group to attain defined goals within time, scope, resources and with sufficient quality? The answer is a good governance structure.

Here a complete governance example with different governing and consultative bodies, for you to have and consider in your next project.

Remember: Avoid assigning the same or similar responsibilities to different governance bodies Adapt the governance to your project size and complexity, not all bodies are always required

2019DIC

Remember: Avoid assigning the same or similar responsibilities to different governance bodies Adapt the governance to your project size and complexity, not all bodies are always required

DICThe European Commission is currently working on the Horizon Europe proposal, with an R&I budget of 100 billion euros with preliminary distribution (and including 3.5 billion Euro allocated under the InvestEU fund.

Some of the new features:

Simplification of reimbursement system

Use of the lump sum project funding against project milestones fulfilment The flexibility of funds allocation between and within pillars

The incorporation of specific missions

and it is an evolution not a revolutionA new programme …

€25.8 €13.5€52.7 €2.4 €2.1

Open Science

Global Challenges & Ind. Competitiveness Open InnovationStrengthening ERA

Euratom

€ billion in current prices

The new programme pillars are envisioned

Strengthening the European Research Area

Pillar 1Open Science

Pillar 2 Global Challenges and Industrial Competitiveness

Pillar 3Open Innovation

European Research Council

Marie Sklodowska - Curie Actions

Research Infrastructures

Health

Inclusive and Secure SocietyDigital and Industry

Climate, Energy and MobilityFood and natural resources

Joint Research Centre

European Innovation Council

European innovation ecosystems

European Institute of Innovation and Technology

… or not?Just a desk calendar

Making it simpleWe work together to provide useful tools, methods and knowledge For your ideas to come to realityFor your projects to attain their goalsFor your results to reach society

To make things simple and enjoyable is our philosophyAnd for us making things simple implies a lotof thinking of hard work of communication of collaboration It means to love what we do

Here is a simple calendar for you to have and useWith some hints we think may come handy and some call deadlines markedmore @: www.wedo-projects.com/blog

And if you want to know more about us:We are based in Barcelona, but we are open to the worldWe are a highly-efficient and proactive team And we will be happy to meet you!