Pre- and Post-award Administration
Eevi Laukkanen
University of Warwick, 8 January 2014
From finding a call to proposal
submission
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Participant Portal:
Personal (or shared?)
log-in
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‘Funding
Opportunities’ 
‘Calls’ or ‘Search
topics’
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Search by: text of the
call, topic titles, call
and topic identifiers,
topic description,
keywords…
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‘Calls’ consist of one or more ‘Topics’
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Call page contains:
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info & updates to the call
key documents
access to the submission system
list of support services
subscription to e-mail notifications about the call
Topic page contains:
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detailed scope and expected impact of projects
type of action
topic conditions (incl. eligibility & evaluation criteria)
.pdf templates of the application forms
access to the submission system
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For most calls, a full proposal is submitted by the given
deadline
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Some calls have a two-stage submission procedure:
• Stage 1: Outline proposal by the given deadline  evaluated
according to the criteria set out in the call/topics
• Stage 2: Only those that pass Stage 1; Full proposal by the
given deadline (~ 2-3 months after notification of Stage 1
results)
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Research and innovation actions (R&I)
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Innovation actions
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Co-ordination and support actions (CSA)
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Prizes
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Fast-track to innovation
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SME instrument
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ERA-NET Cofund
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Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP)
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Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI)
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ERC
• (usually) mono-beneficiary, 100% + 25% indirects
• Bottom-up research projects
• Excellence only evaluation criterion
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Marie Curie Actions
• ITN / RISE – multi-beneficiary
• IF – mono-beneficiary
• Financed through series of pre-determined allowances subject to
country coefficient calculations. Most funding paid to researchers on
the grants (ESRs / ERs). Balance to institutions to contribute to
expenses of the project.
• Bottom up research (and training and development) projects
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Description
• “Action primarily consisting of activities aiming to establish
new knowledge and/or to explore the feasibility of a new or
improved technology, product, process, service or solution”
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Funding rate: 100% + 25% indirects
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Multi-beneficiary
• Minimum: three legal entities each of which established in a different
Member State or associated country
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Respond to challenges set in the Societal challenges or
Industrial Leadership pillars
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Bottom up in FET open (directed in FET proactive)
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Description
• “Action primarily consisting of activities directly aiming at producing
plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved
products, processes or services. For this purpose they may include
prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product
validation and market replication”
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Funding rate: 70% (100% for non-profit) + 25% indirects
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Multi-beneficiary
• Minimum: three legal entities each of which established in a different
Member State or associated country
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Respond to challenges set in the Societal challenges or Industrial
Leadership pillars
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Description
• “Action consisting primarily of accompanying measures such as
standardisation, dissemination, awareness-raising and
communication, networking, coordination or support services,
policy dialogues and mutual learning exercises and studies,
including design studies for new infrastructure”
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Funding: 100% + 25% indirects
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Mono or Multi-beneficiary
• Minimum one legal entity established in a Member State or Associated
Country
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Respond to direction given in the Societal Challenges or
Industrial Leadership pillars, and in FET
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Payment for delivery of a result: Commission will set challenge
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The goal will be to go beyond the current state of the art in research
and innovation.
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Non-prescriptive
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Within Societal Challenges and LEIT programme
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Prize can be either
• “first past the post” – awarded to the first one to solve the problem - or
• “best in class” – awarded to the best solution in a given timescale
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Prizes awarded on the basis of results regardless of costs involved in
achieving the result so no financial checks
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Will either be managed directly by Commission or outsourced through
work-programme funding
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Proposals for innovation actions
Bottom-up within remit of Societal challenges and LEIT
Continuously open call (with its first cut-off date in 2015)
Three cut-off dates per year to evaluate proposals
Time to grant shall not exceed six months
Consortia of no more than 5 legal entities – any legal entity
can participate
Grants of up to €3m
Further details in due course – under development
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Only SMEs can apply and hold grants
SMEs can subcontract research work
Bottom-up within remit of each of the Societal Challenges and
enabling technologies
Continuously open call with four cut-offs per year
Three stage instrument
Combination of demonstration activities (testing, prototyping,
…), market replication encouraging the involvement of end
users or potential clients, and research
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Competitive calls for national research funders to work
together for specific purposes
Cofunded by research funders and the EU
One mandatory open research call
• Calls managed and evaluated according to Horizon 2020 standards
• Grant funding at rates applicable in relevant member state
• ERA-NET funded projects must involve at least two parties in at
least two member states
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Other activity/calls encouraged
Specific topics in Societal Challenges and LEIT programme
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Competitive calls for trans-national consortia of public
organisations to work together to
• Fund research, development and validation of breakthrough solutions that
can bring radical quality and efficiency improvements in areas of public
interest
• Share the risks of acting as early adopters of innovative solutions and to
overcome the fragmentation of demand for innovative solutions in Europe
through joint procurement of solutions
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Co-funded by participants and the EU
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Each PPI action focuses on one shared need that requires similar
innovative solutions across different countries so can be procured
jointly
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Few Research and Innovation actions are “research only”.
All include impact expectations and expected impact is one
of the evaluation criteria
Many include expectation of SME involvement
Most require multi/interdisciplinary approach to problem
solving
Horizontal aspects to bear in mind
• Embedding of social sciences and humanities
• Gender
• Internationalisation
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Call documents
• Work Programme, incl. Introduction and Annexes
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Topics conditions & documents
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Guide for applicants
Proposal templates
Guide for evaluators
Annotated Grant Agreement
EC database of funded projects
NCPs
UKRO
Proposal writing events (UKRO, EC, NCPs)
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Which Funding Scheme?
Planning budget
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Share of costs amongst consortium
Check if European Commission contribution limit imposed
Planning project resources – equipment, subcontracting
Base the costings on proper estimates and cost in everything
that is eligible in your proposal
Discussion of consortium agreement
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Management structure, IPR, payment procedures, nonperformance etc.
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Things to think about:
 Staff time – permanent and new staff, incl. PhD students
 Equipment and consumables
 Meeting costs
 Travel
Claiming all eligible costs - have you forgotten anything?
 Audit costs
 IPR costs
 Open access publishing
 Project manager?
 Existing equipment?
 Inflation
 Dealing with exchange rates
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Direct costs - Direct costs are all those eligible costs
which can be attributed directly to the project and are
identified by the beneficiary as such, in accordance with
its accounting principles and its usual internal rules.
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Indirect Costs - Indirect costs are all those eligible costs
which cannot be identified by the beneficiary as being
directly attributed to the project, but which can be
identified and justified by its accounting system as being
incurred in direct relationship with the eligible direct costs
attributed to the project.
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H2020 –
For-profit
organisations
(incl. SMEs)
H2020 –
Not-for-profit
organisations
(incl. HEI)
Research &
Innovation
100%
100%
Innovation
70%
100%
Indirect costs
25%
25%
Calculate the direct costs:
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Research and innovation costs (incl.
management, dissemination etc.) = €300,000
Calculate the indirect costs:
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Research and innovation: €300,000 x 0.25
= €75,000
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Note that any subcontract costs must be
taken out of the direct costs to calculate the
correct indirect costs.
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Total to be reimbursed = € 375,000
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Online via the Participant Portal submission tool
Participant Identification Code (PIC) needed
• FP7 PICs remain valid
Personal ECAS account for portal access will be needed
• European Commission Authentication Service
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Proposal must be registered by coordinator
Partners will only see detail of application if given access by
coordinator
Access can be given to anyone with an ECAS account
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All proposals consist of
• Part A: Admin forms and budget
• Part B: the actual proposal, uploaded as a PDF to the online submission
system
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Exactly what is required in admin forms depends on scheme
– eg MSCA is different to collaborative projects
Exactly what is required in Part B depends on scheme –
ERC/MCSA/FET/collaborative projects
Part B becomes Annex 1 to the grant agreement
Part A
Part B
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Excellence
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Cover page
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Table of contents
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Project summary
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List of beneficiaries
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Workplan tables – detailed implementation
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Expected impact
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WT1 List of work packages
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WT2 List of deliverables
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WT3 Work package descriptions
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WT4 List of milestones
Measures to reach impact
Exploiting results, including management and protection
of IP
Disseminating results
Project communication activities
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WT5 Critical implementation risks and mitigation actions
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WT6 Summary of project effort in person-months
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WT7 Tentative schedule of project reviews
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Impact
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Implementation
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Project objectives
Concept
Progress beyond the state of the art
Project plan
Management structures and procedures
Description of consortium
Capacity of participants and linked third parties
Planned resources to be committed
Ethical Requirements
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Proposal only admissible if:
• Submitted in the electronic system before the given deadline
• Complete – administrative forms, proposal description and any specified
supporting documentation
• Readable, accessible and printable
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NB: Page limits
• If exceeded automatic warning and invitation to resubmit
• Otherwise truncated and excess pages will not be seen by evaluators
Proposal evaluation and grant
negotiation
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Three criteria
• Excellence
• Impact
• Quality/efficiency of implementation
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Plus
• Financial capacity
• Operational capacity
 Can the consortium do the work proposed?
 Based on competences, experience and complementarity of
individual participants and consortium as a whole
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The extent to which work corresponds to topic description
Clarity and pertinence of objectives
Credibility of approach
Soundness of approach including transdisciplinary aspect
Progress beyond state of art
Quality and efficiency of implementation
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Coherence and effectiveness of the work plan, including
appropriateness of allocation of tasks and resources
Appropriateness of management structures and procedures,
including risk management
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The extent to which project outputs will contribute at European
and/or international level to
• Enhancing innovation capacity and integration of knowledge
• Strengthening the competitiveness and growth of companies by developing
and delivering innovations meeting the needs of European and global
markets
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Effectiveness of the proposed project to exploit and disseminate
results (including management of IPR), to communicate the project,
and to manage research data where relevant
Note: for innovation actions impact criterion weighted at 1.5
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Two selection criteria
• Financial capacity: in line with financial regulation and rules for participation
• Operational capacity: assessed ability to carry out the project effectively
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Three award criteria
• Excellence, Impact, Implementation
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Each criteria scored out of 5
• Threshold for each is 3
• Overall threshold: 10
• For innovation actions impact score weighted at 1.5
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Proposals then ranked by scores
Projects funded according to ranking within budget
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Priority order for proposals with same score
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• Highest excellence score*; then highest impact score*; then size of budget for SMEs; then
gender balance in project team
* for Implementation actions this order is reversed
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Faster negotiation (time to grant 5 + 3 months)
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EC: “No negotiation of the grant agreement in future, what is
submitted will be evaluated. Potential participants must now be
aware of this.”
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Simultaneous finalisation of Consortium Agreement 
Expectation of a signed CA prior to Grant Agreement in H2020
• Signatures  electronic signatures only in H2020
 Legal Entity Representative (LEAR) will nominate those authorised
to sign
 eReceipt – digitally signed PDF
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Invitation to negotiation
Submit Description of Action, Grant Preparation
Forms, supporting documents, etc. via NEF
EC Project Officer will indicate changes or
improvements to the submitted forms
Consortium responds and negotiates with EC Project
Officer until agreement is reached
Process should be concluded before deadline for
completion of negotiations
Meetings between Consortium and EC may be
required
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Single document (incorporating the FP7 Annex II and Annex
III in the main GA)
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Annex 1 – Description of the action (based on Part B of proposal)
Annex 2 – Estimated budget for the action
Annex 3 – Accession Forms of the other beneficiaries
Annexes 4-6 – Model financial statements and certificates
Specific GAs for Marie Curie and ERC
To be accompanied by an ‘Annotated Grant Agreement’ (i.e. a
user guide explaining the GA articles) – first version available
on Participant Portal, to be further developed
Chapter 1: General
• Single article: subject of the agreement
Chapter 2: Action
• Action, duration and budget
Chapter 3: Grant
• Amount, rates, eligible costs
Chapter 4: Rights and obligations
• To implement the action: resources, in-kind contributions, subcontracts
• Grant administration: reporting, payments, audits
• Background and results: access rights, protection of results, exploitation, dissemination
• Others: gender equality, ethics, confidentiality
Chapter 5: Division of roles
•Roles and responsibilities, internal arrangements
Chapter 6: Rejection, reduction, penalties, termination, etc
• Rejection, reduction, recovery and penalties
• Suspension and termination of the action
Chapter 7: Final provisions
• Accession, entry into force, amendments, applicable law
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Mandatory unless specified in call for proposals
Internal organisation of the consortium, including:
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Clear distribution of tasks
Financial arrangements e.g. pre-financing
Settlement of disputes e.g. non-performance
Additional Intellectual Property arrangements e.g. licensing
Liability and confidentiality
Commission Consortium Agreement checklist established
NOT signed by the Commission
Usually drafted and disseminated by Co-ordinator
Models such as DESCA and IPCA can be adapted
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Management of grants
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Certificates on the financial statements
• Will no longer be required during the project – regardless of spend level
• Only at the end of the project and only where a beneficiary’s spend reaches / exceeds €325k
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Timesheets
• No longer required for people 100% time on grant
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VAT
• Can be claimed if cannot be recovered elsewhere
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Exchange rates
• Average of daily rates over reporting period
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Personnel costs
• Three options
 1720 productive hours (higher than what most UK HEIs use)
 Total hours worked in the year for the beneficiary (contracted hours plus overtime less sick/special
leave)
 Standard number according to usual accounting practice
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No audit strategy for Horizon 2020 yet available
First audits (Commission audits) unlikely to happen before
early 2016
Commission will create Common Audit Service (CAS)
Max 7% of beneficiaries in Horizon 2020 can be audited.
Audits can be carried out up to 2 years after the payment of
the balance by the Commission
Promise of broader acceptance of participants’ accounting
practices
Promise of risk and fraud prevention based audit strategy
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In FP7, some grants were managed by executive agencies rather than centrally by
the European Commission (e.g. ERC by European Research Council Executive
Agency ERCEA, MCA by Research Executive Agency REA)
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Under Horizon 2020, plans are to “outsource” more grants and to use additional
existing agencies
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Commission DGs will continue to manage the policy of the programme including
the development of the Strategic Programme, work programmes
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Executive agencies will prepare the guidance documentation for the calls and will
organise the evaluation, setting up the Grant Agreements and the management
and reporting of projects
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UKRO understands there are plans for setting up a Common Support Centre to
have greater consistency in terms of interpretation of the rules
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ERCEA continues to manage ERC grants
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REA takes on FET Open, Food, Inclusive Societies and Secure Societies
Challenges; Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions; ICT and Space within the
Leadership in Industrial Technologies; Widening Participation, and Science with
and for Society.
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Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) to have
responsibility for: Innovation in SMEs, SME instrument, Fast Track to Innovation
Pilot, Climate Challenge, IEE part of the Energy Challenge.
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Innovation Network Executive Agency (INEA) is likely to have responsibility for
the implementation of the Energy and Transport Challenges.
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In addition, there is a possibility that the Executive Agency for Health and
Consumers (EAHC) which currently manages the Public Health Programme
could be involved
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Questions?
Contact
University of Warwick’s European Advisor at UKRO:
Email: Blazej.Thomas@bbsrc.ac.uk
Phone: +32 2 286 9057
Email: Eevi.Laukkanen@bbsrc.ac.uk
Phone: +32 2 286 9055