Transcript How to prepare a good FP7 project proposal? Marko Grobelnik Institut Jožef Stefan.

How to prepare a good
FP7 project proposal?
Marko Grobelnik
Institut Jožef Stefan
Project lifetime
Call for Proposals
Evaluation
Research progress
Negotiation
1st year
2nd year
Reporting
Pre-payment
3rd year
Reporting
Payment
Reporting
Payment
Dissemination …….. exploitation
Final Payment
Who are “actors” in project preparation?
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We, the proposers
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Our partners, konzorcij s katerimi prijavljamo
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…običajno imajo podobne cilje kot mi (ni pa nujno in tega se
je dobro zavedati vnaprej)
Project Officers from EC
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…običajno se trudimo pridobiti projekt in smo za to
pripravljeni investirati nekaj energije in sredstev
…njihova motivacija je, da imajo dobre projekte s katerimi se
lahko promovirajo in da nimajo težav
Evaluators, ki ocenijo naš predlog projekta
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…to so strokovnjaki, ki se trudijo opraviti dobro delo v
kratkem času za solidno plačilo
Whom we are writing project proposal for?
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Most importantly, for ourselves
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Next, the project proposal needs to be tuned
for the eyes of the evaluators
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…in the case get proposal excepted, we are the
ones who will have to carry out the promises
…this requires some experience
If the proposal gets accepted, then we adapt
it together with project officers into the
contract
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…here we introduce add many changes
What is the evaluator's perspective? (1/3)
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An average evaluator of our project proposal is an expert
which most likely doesn’t know the topic of our proposal
in details
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…in the project proposal we need to educate the evaluator about
the context of the proposed topics
Evaluator has always limited time (usually just a
few hours) to read our proposal
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…the proposal should be written clear and evaluator friendly
…we shouldn’t expect the evaluator will make any extra effort
searching for an information if it won’t be able to find it on the
place where it is expected
…it is useful to check the quality of the proposal before
submission with a person having experience with real evaluation
What is the evaluator's perspective? (2/3)
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Evaluator never evaluates the proposal alone and it
is risky for him/her to be incompetently evil
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…we need to avoid any possible reasons which could be
used against the proposal
…if the proposal was informally approved by EC project
officers (proposal clinic) we can expect that project officers
sitting at the evaluation panel will ne positive
Evaluator tries to behave rationally and tries to
decrease risk of being recognized as incompetent
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…our proposal should give the evaluator enough ground for defending it
What is the evaluator's perspective? (3/3)
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Evaluators are usually well experienced and
only rarely miss relevant issues
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…we shouldn’t count on the fact evaluators won’t
spot weaknesses
…if only one evaluator will spot an important issue
(good or bad), he/she will report it to the others
Evaluator uses “evaluation form” which gives
the key guidelines what and how to assess
the proposal
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…next slides describe the evaluation form
FP7 Evaluation criteria scoring
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Scale of 1-5 (and 0)
Criterion threshold 3/5
Overall threshold 10/15
Post-evaluation review for any selected
proposals which have ethical issues
FP7 has three main evaluation criteria
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1. Scientific and technical quality
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2. Implementation
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Soundness of concept, and quality of objectives
Appropriateness of the management
Quality and relevant experience of the individual
participants
3. Impact
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Contribution at the European or international level to the
expected impacts listed in the workprogramme under the
relevant activity
 How
to get involved into a project proposal
discussion?
 How to become part of project proposal?
 How to become part of succesful project
proposal?
 How to behave when the proposal is
accepted and how when it is rejected?
 How to behave during project execution?
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First – we need to have strong interest in
participation
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Don’t get scared not to be able to succeed
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...namely, there is a strong competition for getting Eu money and
ignorance harms
...this is why many people don’t make event the first step
To get appropriate “know-how” about Eu projects
machinery from as many as possible sources about
procedures, habits and experiences
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...from public sources (http://cordis.europa.eu/) and
experienced people which you know
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We need to be aware of our advantages and disadvantages
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We need to build our own social network which we can count on
at the time of proposals
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...you cannot go into the proposal without high quality and appropriate
partners
We need to be identifiable by the expertise and a
service we need to offer to the others
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...don’t let the others warn us about them
...this needs to be substantiated and marketed
We need to be strongly proactive
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...waiting for the others doesn’t payy-off or others are never guilty for our
fiasco
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First, we need to ask ourselves why would we want to
participate on a particular project?
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...because of the idea we would want to accomplish?
...because of the market we would (in)directly gain?
...because of the social network we would get?
...because of the money we would get through the project?
All of the above reasons have sense, but…
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…without a appropriate vision on what we want achieve we can
have problems on several levels (from project proposing to project
execution)
...reputation can get easily wasted without dishonest collaboration
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We need to find a project call or content close to
our key expertise
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...spectrum of different contents and ways to collaborate is
very large (in particular in FP7)
If we are inexperienced, it is better to attach and
collaborate with more experienced partners
...alone we cannot be competitive
 ...we can offer our service under the guidance of others
 ...to get partners we can use also “dating” services, but we
need to be careful
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What helps when preparing proposal?
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Clear vision created and led by a small number of people – core
group (no anarchy!)
To have direct connection and regular communication with
responsible Brussels officers (to ask them about all the details)
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…officers are usually friendly and responsive, but one needs to contact
them
Protocol: weekly phone conferences, monthly physical meetings, one
or two check with officers
Clear commitments and responsibilities (constant contact between
the partners)
Efficient communication between project partners
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…long and ineffective communication can make partners tired and
uninterested
Problems (1)
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No vision (vision is just “we want that project” or
“we want money from EU”)
Project idea has no potential (it is interesting just
for the proposer)
Academics would like to do just basic science and
consider industrial partners as nuisance
Industrial partners would like to get easy money to
develop their product (having almost no research
component)
Project partners are friends instead of partners
(...if you don’t take him, he/she is offended, if you
take him the project gets worse)
Problems (2)
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Coordination of proposal preparation is to anarchic
(everybody is able to push his own idea, coordinator
has no authority or not enough knowledge)
Forgetting small things: gender balance, having SMEs
(large companies like to forget about a small fish), EU
contribution, ...
Ignoring criteria for project evaluation
Waiting with the proposal writing till the last moment
before the submission (...project preparation becomes
collecting of text pieces in panic and putting them
together).
Problems (3)
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Final consistency check need – evaluators notice
inconsistencies and imbalances very fast
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Proposal writing doesn’t take into account that
evaluators are usually just well informed technicians and
not experts for that particular area
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…this is evaluator’s main tool to find difficulties
…use clear and common language whenever possible
Proposal message is spread around the proposal
document and concentrated at one clearly designated
place
Problems (4)
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When preparing proposal be aware of the conditions
how the proposal will be evaluated:
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…evaluators have just a few hours per proposal
…all the proposals seem to evaluators after couple of days very
similar to each other – small things decide
…if you pre-communicated with the Commission officers, the
officer at the consensus meeting can be your proposal’s ally
…you can be unlucky with the selection of the evaluators:
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they can be either too academic or to technical or too tired or too
negative or too perfectionist, …
...try to put into the proposal some cookies for each one of those
psychological profiles
Problems (5)
...being late just for a couple of hours or minutes
Dear partners,
after busy weeks working on the XXX proposal and with some of you
in parallel on the YYY proposal I have to admit that I have
underestimated the work and organisational efforts.
At the end we missed the deadline only by some hours after working
also the last night very hard without stop.
I take the responsibility for the bad situation.
Many thanks to you all for your engagement especially ...
We have become a good team and I hope this will enable us to use the
proposal for the next call ...
Key reasons for rejecting project proposals in
FP6
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Bad consortium
Bad relevancy
(EU, exploitation, dissemination)
Bad Implementation
Not enough innovation
Not enough information
Bad management
Out of scope of the call
Too high costs
76%
59%
32%
29%
21%
20%
10%
10%
Concluding remarks
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The key issue when proposing Eu projects is
to have enough international connections
with trustful partners
…further, we need to show our excellence
and quality of work (to keep and develop the
trust)
…we need to be careful and realistic about
our resources