Assumptions:
- All staff involved is motivated and organized.
- Institutions are receptive to the implementation of the project.
- Good collaboration with partners.
Risks:
- Staff involved is over-loaded.
- Other services of the institution consider their involvement as unnecessary supplementary workload.
- Management tasks have been underestimated by the consortium.
DESCRIPTION:
Project applicant will take on a role of project manager and will be responsible for administrative matters related to running the project during its entire lifetime. The main issue in the beginning is therefore to elaborate a Consortium Agreement and to collect all partners’ signatures. Project manager will take care of supervision over adherence to the project’s schedule, as control loop for the quality WP leader, to ensure timely and effective fulfillment of tasks and work packages. The project manager will also undertake monitoring the deployment of allocated resources. Decisions will be approved by the project manager (purchase of literature, equipment, publishing of materials, subcontracting, other matters related to finances). These include but are not limited to preparation of financial statements upon partner’s input, reporting to EACEA, negotiation of cases of needed partial financial resources relocation across costs categories etc. Obviously, decisions affecting the entire consortium will be made during the project meetings on SC level.
The project manager will facilitate communication between project partners unassisted or through the corresponding work package leader. Members of the steering committee responsible for the local teams will be in direct contact with the project manager or, if it is more feasible, with the corresponding work package leader, who, in turn, will establish contact with the project manager. All extraordinary meetings (online conferences via Skype) in the lifetime of the project will be arranged and/or held with the participation of the representative of the project manager to guarantee well-informed coordination of the project after discussion of current issues.
Seven meetings with the participation of the steering committee members are scheduled for the project’s lifetime. These are one kick-off meeting at the beginning of the project, two meetings at the end of the first and the second year of the project, and the final meeting at the end of the third year of the project. Additional meetings are aligned with other activities to save travel costs (e.g. with D 2.1.4 (Running training sessions for teaching and administrative staff), D 4.2.1 (Coaching seminar before mutual cross-country mobility run), D 4.2.5 (Concluding administrative staff meeting)). Project meetings will allow for discussion of scheduled project-related tasks and those arising in the course of the project, coordination of roles and responsibilities. They will also provide for reiteration of the tasks defined and delegated to each project member in the course of project development.
All meetings except for the first kick-off meeting will also include the preparation of reports, i.e. two interim reports and one final report. These reports will aim at analyzing of the project progress and results, examination of possible eviations and their clarification in accordance with the EACEA templates. The final report will build on the findings highlighted in the previous reports, look into the project’s progress of the last year and provide a broader perspective on the achievements and impact of the project. External financial auditors control the financial statements of the intermediate and final report that are submitted to the EACEA.