How to prepare a good FP7 project proposal ?

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 3rd year Reporting Reporting Reporting Pre-payment Payment Payment Final Payment Dissemination …….. exploitation

Who are “actors” in project preparation? • We, the proposers • …običajno se trudimo pridobiti projekt in smo za to pripravljeni investirati nekaj energije in sredstev • Our partners, konzorcij s katerimi prijavljamo • …običajno imajo podobne cilje kot mi (ni pa nujno in tega se je dobro zavedati vnaprej) • Project Officers from EC • …njihova motivacija je, da imajo dobre projekte s katerimi se lahko promovirajo in da nimajo težav • Evaluators, ki ocenijo naš predlog projekta • …to so strokovnjaki, ki se trudijo opraviti dobro delo v kratkem času za solidno plačilo

Whom we are writing project proposal for? • Most importantly, for ourselves • …in the case get proposal excepted, we are the ones who will have to carry out the promises • Next, the project proposal needs to be tuned for the eyes of the evaluators • …this requires some experience • If the proposal gets accepted, then we adapt it together with project officers into the contract • …here we introduce add many changes

What is the evaluator's perspective? (1/3) • An average evaluator of our project proposal is an expert which most likely doesn’t know the topic of our proposal in details • …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 • …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) • Evaluator never evaluates the proposal alone and it is risky for him/her to be incompetently evil • …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 • …our proposal should give the evaluator enough ground for defending it

What is the evaluator's perspective? (3/3) • Evaluators are usually well experienced and only rarely miss relevant issues • …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 • …next slides describe the evaluation form

FP7 Evaluation criteria scoring • 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 • 1. Scientific and technical quality • Soundness of concept, and quality of objectives • 2. Implementation • Appropriateness of the management • Quality and relevant experience of the individual participants • 3. Impact • Contribution at the European or international level to the expected impacts listed in the workprogramme under the relevant activity

Key phases when proposing and executing a project 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?

How to get involved into a project proposal discussion? (1/2) • First – we need to have strong interest in participation • ...namely, there is a strong competition for getting Eu money and ignorance harms • Don’t get scared not to be able to succeed • ...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 • ...from public sources (http://cordis.europa.eu/) and experienced people which you know

How to get involved into a project proposal discussion? (2/2) • We need to be aware of our advantages and disadvantages • ...don’t let the others warn us about them • We need to build our own social network which we can count on at the time of proposals • ...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 • ...this needs to be substantiated and marketed • We need to be strongly proactive • ...waiting for the others doesn’t payy-off or others are never guilty for our fiasco

How to become part of project proposal? (1/2) • First, we need to ask ourselves why would we want to participate on a particular project? • ...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… • …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

How to become part of project proposal? (2/2) • We need to find a project call or content close to our key expertise • ...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

What helps when preparing proposal? • 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) • …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 commitmentsand responsibilities (constant contact between the partners) • Efficient communication between project partners • …long and ineffective communication can make partners tired and uninterested

Problems (1) • 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) • 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) • Final consistency check need – evaluators notice inconsistencies and imbalances very fast • …this is evaluator’s main tool to find difficulties • Proposal writing doesn’t take into account that evaluators are usually just well informed technicians and not experts for that particular area • …use clear and common language whenever possible • Proposal message is spread around the proposal document and concentrated at one clearly designated place

Problems (4) • When preparing proposal be aware of the conditions how the proposal will be evaluated: • …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: • 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 youin parallel on the YYY proposal I have to admit that I haveunderestimated 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 theproposal for the next call ...

Key reasons for rejecting project proposals in FP6 • Bad consortium 76% • Bad relevancy 59% (EU, exploitation, dissemination) • Bad Implementation 32% • Not enough innovation 29% • Not enough information 21% • Bad management 20% • Out of scope of the call 10% • Too high costs 10%

Concluding remarks • 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

How to prepare a good FP7 project proposal ?