SFI Research Centres
Guideline for Completion of Monthly Reports on Industry
and HR Contracts
January 2015
Research Centres (RCs) are required to submit two reports on a monthly basis:
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Update on industry contracts
Update on staff contracts
In both cases, these updates are to be submitted before cob on the 5th working day of each month.
Hence, unless advised otherwise, updates will be due in 2015 on the following dates:
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Q1: January 8th , February 6th , March 6th
Q2: April 7th , May 7th , June 5th
Q3: July 7th , August 7th , September 7th
Q4: October 7th , November 6th , December 7th
Reports must be submitted by email to centres@sfi.ie. SFI will not be issuing reminders on these
reporting dates. RCs are required to introduce practices appropriate to ensuring that the monthly
reports are prepared and submitted on schedule and in an appropriate manner.
Guidelines for Industry Contracts
An Excel spreadsheet template provided by SFI (RC Industry Contracts 2015) must be used. The
metrics provided by each RC are combined for further analysis for monthly reporting to the SFI
executive committee. To that end, it is essential that RCs provide their metrics in a clean and
reusable fashion. A number of rules around the completion of the Excel spreadsheet and in
particular the use of dropdown lists are listed below. The contract status column has a drop down
list with the following options listed along with their definitions:
Contract Status
In discussion
Contract in preparation
Contract issued
Contract signed
Contract terminated
Company withdrawn
Contract Expired
Definition
RC in discussion with industry partner over potential target project
Target project has been scoped and the collaborative research
agreement (CRA) is in preparation
The collaborative research agreement has been sent to the industry
partner for further negotiation/signing
The industry partner has signed the CRA
The signed contract has been terminated through unforeseen
circumstances.
The company has withdrawn from discussions
The target project has been completed and the contract has thus
expired
If a company withdraws from contract discussions, it is important that this information is retained in
the spreadsheet under ‘Company withdrawn’ and is not deleted from the spreadsheet.
Statistics relating to the industry partners are often requested by DEJI and IDA and can feed into
discussions on the action plan for jobs. Therefore each RC is asked to supply information on the
company profile (SME or MNC) and country of origin.
RCs are asked to review the following guidelines:
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Do not add any new columns to the spreadsheet template.
Unless explicitly or implicitly expected, do not add any new rows to the template.
Do not change any of the row or column titles.
Where required, use only your Centre name or abbreviation and always use capital letters. Do
not append HEI affiliations or any other sub-classification.
For country of origin, please provide the name of the country in capital letters.
Strictly adhere to any validations that have been set up. If a particular validation does not
include an appropriate value to your Centre’s situation, use the next most appropriate one. Do
not introduce new validation entries.
Do not use any formula other than those already provided in the template.
Do not reference any values outside the bounds of the template.
In the case of monetary amounts, provide the exact amount, not an abbreviation. For example,
provide 250000, not €250k or €0.25m.
In the case of dates, provide an exact date, not an abbreviation. For example, provide
31/3/2015, not Q1 2015.
In the case of percentages, provide the percentage as a fraction of 1. For example, for 10%, use
0.1, not 10. The appearance of the percentage can be changed without altering the underlying
value.
If any values need to be estimated, provide the best estimate possible. Do not append any other
text. If your estimate for a particular value is 100, report, 100, not 100 (est) or 100 (approx.).
Where a value is known, provide the value, even if it is repeated across multiple rows (e.g. the
Centre name). If the value is 0, provide 0, not a blank.
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If the value is unknown or not applicable, leave the cell blank, not n/a.
Guidelines for Staff Contracts
An Excel spreadsheet template provided by SFI (RC_HR 2015) must be use. Notes are provided in
the provided templates which are self-explanatory. The purpose of the staff contract update is to
ensure there are no issues incurred in the initial operation and start-up of the RCs.
Any questions on the above should be directed to centres@sfi.ie.