How to prepare a good FP7 project proposal

1
How to prepare a good FP7 project proposal?

• Marko Grobelnik
• Institut Joef Stefan

2
Project lifetime
Call for Proposals
Evaluation
Research progress
Negotiation
2nd year
3rd year
1st year
Reporting
Reporting
Reporting
Payment
Payment
Final Payment
Pre-payment
Dissemination .. exploitation
3
Who are actors in project preparation?

• We, the proposers
• obicajno se trudimo pridobiti projekt in smo za
  to pripravljeni investirati nekaj energije in
  sredstev
• Our partners, konzorcij s katerimi prijavljamo
• obicajno 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 teav
• Evaluators, ki ocenijo na predlog projekta
• to so strokovnjaki, ki se trudijo opraviti dobro
  delo v kratkem casu za solidno placilo

4
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

5
What is the evaluator's perspective? (1/3)

• An average evaluator of our project proposal is
  an expert which most likely doesnt 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 shouldnt expect the evaluator will make any
  extra effort searching for an information if it
  wont 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

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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

7
What is the evaluator's perspective? (3/3)

• Evaluators are usually well experienced and only
  rarely miss relevant issues
• we shouldnt count on the fact evaluators wont
  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

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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

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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

10
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?

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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
• Dont get scared not to be able to succeed
• ...this is why many people dont 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

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How to get involved into a project proposal
discussion? (2/2)

• We need to be aware of our advantages and
  disadvantages
• ...dont 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 doesnt payy-off or
  others are never guilty for our fiasco

13
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

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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

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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 commitments and responsibilities (constant
  contact between the partners)
• Efficient communication between project partners
• long and ineffective communication can make
  partners tired and uninterested

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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 dont take him, he/she is offended, if
  you take him the project gets worse)

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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).

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Problems (3)

• Final consistency check need evaluators notice
  inconsistencies and imbalances very fast
• this is evaluators main tool to find
  difficulties
• Proposal writing doesnt 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

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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 proposals 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

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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
  ...

21
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

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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