The complexity of meetings

Experiences of a Project Coordinator – A blog series by Istvan Pari.

Most people when hear the word „coordinator” they tend to start picturing someone stuck behind a desk sending gazillion emails and making a hefty number of phone calls of various lengths every day in order to keep his/her project on its track.

For someone with a bit more vivid imagination the project coordinator may appear as a spider dwelling in the middle of its web, pulling strings to motivate the consortium members and occasionally moves around to attend interim meetings, other project related gatherings or simply just to pay a visit to Brussels to see what’s going on.

In general we can say that coordinators like giving instructions via email or over the phone but in some cases personal bi- or trilateral meetings cannot be avoided at the partner’s premises, especially when the given issue at hand belongs solely to the coordinator’s competence.

For example, imagine that you as project partner in an international consortium receive a mail from the European Commission’s financial services that you as Partner “3″ in the “XY” project have been selected for a financial audit.

After the first shock you may start to wonder why it was your organisation which was handpicked to be audited. Then you probably contact your coordinator immediately letting him know of the situation and unless you are an expert on let’s say FP7 financials you will ask for his/her support to get prepared for the audit.

 And that is the point when the coordinator will have to make an unscheduled move and get out of his/her “web” and initiate a meeting with the partner(s) involved because there is no way that you will be able to sort out a detailed go-through over the bills and financial statements neither via Skype nor other means of communications.

In an ideal case the coordinator has some idea on how to prepare for an audit and also some experience on what those details are which help to comply with the many requests of the auditors. Also in an ideal world there are no communication barriers between the partner waiting to be audited and the coordinator while discussing the matters at hand.

But in reality a third party might be needed to bridge such gaps. Also it usually helps if the audited party shows some interest towards the whole procedure and tries to go with the meeting’s flow rather than just leaving all the juicy part to the third party to absorb. It might happen that the partner get dethatched from the topic since it is explained in foreign language and at the end of the day the meeting will be concluded with a realisation that it was nothing short of a waste of time for him, though all the major aspects had been covered.

Cultural differences may further burden such meetings. I personally witnessed the very despising reaction of a number of male representatives from the soon-to-be audited-partner’s side being quite obviously ignorant towards a female representative of the third party who was trying to convey the coordinator’s message on the important details for them. As a result the involved third party became an expert on EC financials however that was not the aim of her involvement.

Situations may escalate to a point during such a complex meeting (in terms of topic, number of attending participants and linguistic barriers) that the meeting participants are engaged into casual chat with each other and start not paying any attention beyond a certain point to the coordinator’s instructions while the coordinator finds himself briefing the third party only to realise that in the strictest sense none of them has anything to do with the audit.

 This is because collective financial responsibility does not apply in any of the EC funded programmes, meaning that though the coordinator may suggest the partner how to spend the EC funding (in line with the DoW), but if they choose to go for a hot-tub instead and put its cost on the project budget the coordinator is no longer liable for such actions.

Fortunately the story had a happy ending, but it perfectly reflects some of the many issues you got to come over which are not closely related to the technical aspects of your project.

Finalising and submitting the proposal

Part 6.

Similar to writing an essay, swiftly putting together a first draft of the project proposal and later revising and improving it gradually is usually a good approach (provided that you have enough time!). However, as we mentioned in our previous blog post, it is important to establish a clear outline of the proposal as a first step. Likewise, you would need to gather a critical amount of necessary technical content before proceeding with compiling that first draft of the proposal. So, it is essential to allow for some time for gathering the “ingredients” of the proposal by conducting research and digging into various types of relevant documents and data as needed. Already at this stage, the partners’ contribution comes handy; so, push them to provide you with useful input!

Once you feel that you have sufficient material to fill in the different sections of the proposal, go ahead and start typing in the forms. You will then have the basis of the proposal, most probably with some missing links. Next steps will be to fill these missing links and to check and re-check if everything is properly fitting and the proposal design is appropriate. As we pointed out in Part 4 of this blog series, perhaps the most typical feature of this process is that it is “iterative”. So, do return back to various sections of the proposal to refine, rectify and adjust certain things until perfection.

While completing the forms and finalising your proposal, the following tips may be helpful:

• As you continue shaping and updating your proposal, regularly refer back to the call text (work programme topic) to ensure that you are still fully in line with the call requirements and expectations;
• Allow enough time to put together a well thought-out Gantt chart and PERT diagram as opposed to preparing them hastily and risking ending up with generic diagrams and figures, which would be harshly commented by the evaluators;
• Clearly demonstrate the complementarity of the partners that you have brought together – show how they are well suited to take care of the specific tasks they are assigned with, while at the same time contributing to other collaborative/joint tasks;
• Think carefully on every kind of resource that is necessary for realising the the activities you have planned;
• In view of the resources needed, make a careful estimation of the project budget (do not underestimate!) and provide detailed explanation and justification of the individual budget items.

While finalising your proposal, be ready for surprises and challenges, hence to improvise and act pragmatically. For instance, even after several requests, you may have partners not providing information/data (e.g. partner description, budget related information, etc.), which you might end up having to find out and/or create on your own. Be ready to spend longer hours in the office (or to continue working at home or elsewhere) and/or to work at the weekends. In most cases, preparation of the proposal will come as an additional task to your day-to-day activities at work.

If you proceed according to your plan, hopefully you will manage to have a final draft of your proposal a few days prior to the submission deadline, which will allow you to double-check and cross-check everything. Another piece of advice here would be to ask a colleague or friend, who has not been involved in the preparation of the proposal, to have a look at the final draft of the proposal with fresh eyes and give you an honest feedback. It would even be better if this colleague or friend could assess the proposal against the official evaluation criteria.

Finally, leave enough time to do a proper formatting and editing of the proposal and its language. The proposal will be the only tool trying to express your project concept and ideas to the evaluators. Therefore, you’d better ensure that it communicates in the best way! Make sure to avoid any spelling errors and grammar mistakes, acronyms or abbreviations not spelled out, too small fonts, long and merged paragraphs, etc. Do include graphics, tables or other illustrative elements to avoid just plain text and make the reader’s life easier. Repeating certain good arguments and strong ideas throughout the proposal and highlighting them appropriately would also be a good idea so that they are not overlooked.

If you worked hard on the proposal and believe that you have done your best, your efforts will most likely pay off. Submit your proposal by the deadline and wish for the best!

Ömer