C.2 Coordinating a Horizon Europe Project – special course for Coordinators

This one-day course will help coordinators (and coordinators to be) to prepare to successfully coordinate their Horizon Europe projects. It is built on our direct, hands-on experience gained in coordinating projects under Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.

In this course, participants will learn all about the bright and the dark side of being a coordinator. The combination of practical presentations and hands-on tips will introduce all the aspects you need to know about efficiently coordinating your actual cost and lump sum projects: from setting up a consortium agreement, through handling delays, IP conflicts, cultural differences, not fully achieved targets and so much more, through surviving the reporting, the technical reviews and the closure of the project, only to continue for at least one more year to maximise the impact of your project.

Agenda

08:30–09:00 Arrival of participants

09:00–09:15 Event Opening and introduction to the course

09:15–10:15 Coordination duties during Grant Agreement and Consortium  Agreement preparation

Step by step introduction to the duties of the Coordinator during the Grant Agreement preparation from receiving the Invitation to GAP letter till the signature of your GA. How to handle requests from the EC, how to coordinate data collection from the partners and the signature process? We will deep dive into the sections of the DESCA 2.0 Model Consortium Agreement (LS and standard) and highlight the topics to be discussed with the partners at each chapter. Examples of different decision-making procedures, management structures, IP provisions and budget distribution will be introduced.

(10:15–10:30 Coffee Break)

10:30–11:15 Administrative tasks, horizontal duties and internal systems

In addition to the mandatory administrative duties, such as maintaining good working relation with the PO and providing regular updates, the EC expects Coordinators to represent the project at various events or in different professional communities which are usually not foreseen in your proposal. Moreover, horizontal topics such as ethics issues, open science obligations will put additional task to the coordinators to do list. At the same time Coordinators have to build easy to use internal systems for supporting the implementation of the project and the proper monitoring. All these topics will be covered in this practical presentation.

(11:15–11:30 Short Break)

11:30–12:30 How to coordinate the Continuous reporting and Periodic reporting?

In this session, we will present the full reporting cycle from the coordinator's perspective. We will go through each and every task and discuss the input required from the partners. Several useful templates and good practices will be shared to

facilitate the coordinator's work. We will also cover how to monitor results, KPIs, tasks and, if necessary, how to initiate GA amendment.

(12:30–13:15 Lunch break)

13:15–14:00 Financial management of the projects

In this presentation, we will go through all the financial aspects, from pre-financing to the distribution of the payment of the balance. How do we monitor project spending? How detailed should an internal reporting be? What data and figures does this internal financial report provide? How do we handle budget related requests from partners? What to do with deviations? This presentation will answer all these questions.

(14:00–14:15 Coffee Break)

14:15–15:00 Workshop: Coordination case studies and scenarios

Under the moderation of trainers, participants will analyse and discuss solutions to real-life coordination scenarios such as: Conflicts on exploitation and intellectual property rights (IPR) issues; Disagreements on dissemination and scientific publications; Delays and quality problems in results; Overspending and underperforming partners etc.