Today I attended a training workshop on large-scale funding for projects. I have built my research career on such projects, but it is never too late to learn and gain from others’ experiences.
Anne Adams (IET):
Tensions – Turning Tension
- Understand the drivers of the partners
- Manage expectations
- Managing cultural differences
- differences can be enablers
- Working at the OU is like working at a mini-EU (committee structures, scale, layers, etc.)
- Learn by mistakes
- Use processes and support : Trouble shooting
- Funders can be a useful connection point – use them
- Check understanding
- Impact and dissemination from early on – impact and engagement
- Balancing different objectives – your partners are doing the same
Small Projects
- More focused objectives
- Smaller budgets
- Tighter timeframes
- Researchers often have to do project management as well
Large Projects
- Inverse of above but effectively made up of a series of small projects
Managing Time
- Clear-out bid writing time
- Co-ordinate multiple objectives
- Larger projects may have tighter financial restrictions
Managing People
Stakeholders
- Project partners
- Outside the project who are they?
- Involve in writing the bid
- Involve users
- Expectations
- Highlight how stakeholders have been involved in bid writing
- Shifting timescales
- OU Catalyst Project – Research School
- Breakdown what will be available when
Roles
- Administrators
- Project manager
- Researchers
- Academics as researchers / teachers / communicators
Lines of management
- Issue of part-time staff
- Commenting on objectives
- People are overworked
- Use e-mail sparingly
KPIs / Partners
- Co PIs / Partners
- Institutional differences
- Cultural differences
- Tensions from misunderstandings
Manage expectations
- Competing expectations from a project
- From partners
- From funders
- Your own objectives
Be Brave
- Proactive in getting key players in the bid who may have a previous funding record with the funders
- Summary of objectives and ideas early on
- Leverage OU
- Scale
- Contacts
- Systems and procedures e.g. ethics
- Management systems
- Don’t be afraid
- Change adapt ideas, partners even near deadline
- Bring in additional partners – mid-project if necessary
- If lose trust in a partner – deal with it – don’t want a disaster during the project
Turning Tensions Around
- transferable skills from teaching at the OU
- Learn to take risks
- Allow exploration
- Keep it focus
- Allow partners to shine
Using people available
- Colleagues
- Research school
- Successful bids
Using Processes
- Re-use processes
- Other external projects
- Get feedback from potential reviewers
- Funders have resources to support
Share your ideas
- Share ideas early on – get the project name out there!
- Leaving it to the end means missing opportunities
- Share your ideas with your partners
- Different ways of sharing:
- Posters
- Speed dating events
- Plan to create a video early on
- Create eBooks
- Websites / data sharing (in project and public)
John Domingue (KMi):
Why:
- Funding for staff and the latest equipment and travel
- Good for CV – funding necessary for promotion to Chair
- Networking
- It gives you autonomy
How:
- Need a great idea for a project – the elevator test – can you sell it in 2 mins
- The larger the funding the more political
- In Europe saying the US has it is a seller
- E.g. “turning the web from one of data into one of services”
Reviews
- Writing for the reviews – able to give up a week of their time so tend to be good researchers but not the best. They have to read a lot of bids – make yours stand out
- Also have to write for the EC Section who select the funded bids
- Make it something beyond the state-of-the-art
- Clear, pertinent, transparent
Official Criteria
- Excellence (threshold 3/5)
- Impact (threshold 3/5)
- Quality and Efficiency
- Plan has to match the idea … if you are going to change the world in X do the resources to do it?
- The Consortium – probably counts 50%
- Do you have the big players? If not why not?
- Use the relevant industrial associations if appropriate
- EU projects is a game – play by the rules
- Make sure the objective aims of the proposals are aligned with the big partners
Consortium
- Make sure every partner is playing a specific role
- Exploitation partners hardest to find – but most important
- Academics will always come aboard
- SMEs / Industrial players
- Leading Research Institutions
- Balance by Country, region, and type
Process
- Year to 9 months ahead of deadline meeting of core partners – set forward the core idea
- Pre-consortium beauty contest
- Needs to be handled careful
- E-mails, Skype, etc. to develop the bid
- Set a small team of people who will write the bid
- The consortium may well change during the bid writing
- Talk to the funder
Commission Dialogue
- Go to Brussels for a day, e.g. an info day
- Get feedback from the Commission after the call is out
- Be prepared to radically change the bid in response to feedback
- Study the Workplan early – before the call is published
Proposal Document
- Template
- Stick within page limit
- Coherent
- Text
- Workplan (spreadsheets/ Gantt charts etc.)
- Risk Management
- Note – unit heads will have their own goals – how does your project fit?
- Take into account previous EU projects in State-of-the-Art
- Use strategic reports from the Commission and others to give background information
- Typically WPs: Management; 3 Technical WPs, Dissemination and Exploitation
- Get balance of roles between the partners across the WPs right – balance the effort to match the objectives
- Impact – who are the authoritative sources? Quote from key reports e.g. Gartner
Writing the Proposal
- Small team of good writers (native English speakers), separated away from other work, usually in a shared office – use study leave
Submission
- The deadline is final!
Networking
- The difference between a good academic and a good academic with project money is networking
- Info days
- Often include networking session to find partners/projects
- ICT Events (different in different fields)
- Keynotes invite Commission representative to conferences you organise
Easy way to start
- Become a project or proposal reviewer
- The OU is a world leader in Pedagogy – lead training workpackages
Sarah Gray (Research Office)
Research Support
E-mail: Research-Grants-Contracts@open.ac.uk
- Work closely with faculty administrators
- Review and approve all external bids (to Leverhulme and UKRCs)
- Sarah is EU co-ordinator
- Finding funding opportunities
- Research.professional.com
- Current oppertunies page
- Visit UKRO and register e-mail address
- National Contact Points in UK.Gov
- Open calls on WWW page URL: search EU Horizon 2020 Participant Portal
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