Essential Dos and Don ts | Bids, Tenders and Proposals: Winning Business through Best Practice (Bids, Tenders & Proposals: Winning Business Through Best)

Essential Dos and Don'ts

The contents of this book offer detailed points of advice on the means of developing a convincing and competitive proposal that are as relevant to research applications as to bids for consultancy and services contracts. Though the chapters that follow do not have the word 'research' in their titles, they include guidance that will be endorsed by all research administrators:

Read carefully the information from the funding organization, as well as its instructions about the submission of applications. If the organization provides a standard application form or template, you must use it and complete all the relevant parts. If you neglect to do that, you risk disqualification.
Applicants often fail to respond adequately to the guidance they are given. Ask yourself why the organization wants information presented in a particular way, why it attaches importance to a particular aspect of the research. Just repeating phrases from the guidance will not be sufficient: you have to put flesh on your ideas and communicate depth not superficiality.
Remember that you are applying for funding, not applying simply to do the research: think about the priorities of the organization, and explain why its involvement is necessary.
Check that you and your partners in the research team meet the eligibility criteria for funding: for example, researchers who already hold grants awarded under a related call for tenders may be ineligible to participate in certain contracts.
Make it clear which of you is taking the lead in submitting the bid. Ensure that all the necessary letters of commitment and intention to collaborate are included.
Don't just list the research partners. Explain the rationale of the partnership - why you have formed that association; what its joint and distinctive strengths are; how these strengths add value to the proposal; and what each member of the team will contribute to the research in terms of time and resource inputs.
Give a sharply focused statement of the objectives of the research and the significance of your work. Describe its context and its links and connections with other work in the field.
The application has to show balance, practicality and realism: it cannot afford to be overambitious. Set out a clear, uncomplicated path through the research programme, with a sound methodology.
The way the application is written can have a decisive impact on how evaluators judge your quality and professionalism. Opaque writing is viewed as a sign of opaque thinking, and no one is keen to fund that. If you cannot communicate clearly to your peers evaluating your ideas, how will you communicate your results to the wider community?
Your ideas about disseminating the results of the research have to be properly thought through. For example, posting research reports on the Internet may seem a straightforward solution to you, but will not necessarily be an effective means of reaching the people who stand to benefit most from your work.
If you are resubmitting a previously unsuccessful proposal, explain how you have amended and improved its content in the light of its initial evaluation.

Fifteen tips to increase your chances of being successful

Make an accurate assessment of the effort required. One of the European Commission's major concerns is to simplify and streamline as much as possible the administrative and other work involved in preparing a proposal. Nevertheless, you should not underestimate the quantity and cost of resources required - in particular with regard to negotiations with partners - in order to submit a top-quality proposal with a reasonable chance of being accepted. On the other hand, the thinking required to reply to the Commission's various questions may help applicants to realize that certain factors have not been properly evaluated and thus improve their project. The programme information packages offer checklists for this purpose.

Eligible partners. Check first of all whether you and your partners satisfy the conditions for participating in the programme (legal status, etc), and the conditions relating to the particular activity in question: certain activities may, for example, be earmarked for SMEs, organizations in certain industrial sectors, etc.

Specific actions and RTD objectives. Check whether your proposal does in fact correspond to an activity covered by the call in question. Ineligible proposals and proposals that do not concern activities covered by the call will be excluded from the evaluation.

Selection criteria. You should pay careful attention to the selection criteria, since proposals that do not meet these will not be considered for funding.

Management. You must clearly explain and justify your ability to ensure high-quality management commensurate with the scale of the project.

Content. A good proposal must satisfy the five selection criteria:

scientific/technological quality and innovation;

Community added value;

contribution to Community social objectives;

potential economic, scientific and technological impact;

quality of management, partnership and resources.

Since the requirements may vary from one programme to another, refer to the Information Package for the programme you have selected.

Ethical issues. Describe clearly all the possible ethical and regulatory aspects in relation to the research to be carried out, and how they are governed by national regulations.

Presentation. A good proposal will be written clearly in a way that is easy to understand. It should be precise and concise - the evaluators will judge it on the content, not the number of pages. Since the processing of certain forms is automated (optical recognition machines), it is important to complete them legibly and carefully so as not to delay the processing of your file.

Results. A good proposal clearly indicates the expected results and the way in which the participants plan to publicize or use them.

Exhaustiveness. Proposals should be complete, since they are evaluated only on the basis of the written documents presented. Follow the instructions given on the form. The Commission recommends using the ProTool software package, which it will provide to applicants, free of charge, for the preparation of proposals.

Partnership. Partners must discuss and agree on their respective responsibilities, rights, obligations and roles beforehand.

Contract. Check to see whether the conditions of the model contract applicable to your project are understood by and are acceptable to all the partners.

Competition. Project proposals compete against one another. A weakness in an otherwise valid dossier risks undermining it. Therefore, take particular care with your proposal and improve it or eliminate weak points.

Quality control. Get your project proposal evaluated by experienced colleagues on the basis of the evaluation criteria set out in the Commission's Guide for Proposers so as to improve it before submitting it. Take care to ensure that all the formal and administrative criteria are scrupulously satisfied: submission deadline, number of copies, instructions on packaging (double envelopes, etc), authorized signatures, legal and accounting information, acknowledgement of receipt, etc. Around 10 per cent of proposals received by the Commission are eliminated because they fail to comply with one of these criteria! If you have any doubts, please consult the Infodesk of the programme concerned.

Use the Internet. Good Internet access is particularly useful for any applicant under the Framework Programme; the CORDIS Web site offers direct, continually updated and partially multilingual access to all useful documents, information and services. However, you do not have to use the Internet. All the documents and information can be obtained through more conventional means such as fax, telephone and mail.

(from the EC publication Participating in the European Research Programmes: Guide for applicants under the Fifth Framework Programme)