Abstract

To build on our existing foundation of support services, UMC Utrecht (UMCU) is developing a number of innovative services in which the collaboration between pre- and post- award is crucial. By combining the expertise of grant experts, project managers and science communicators we hope to learn from eachother and the past to create even better and more viable projects for the future.

As you can imagine, there can be a thin line between an award-winning proposal and a well-performing project. The best proposal might be over-promising, the best project will most definitely not fit the proposal criteria. So, how do we come to the best of both worlds? And how do we avoid conflict when trying to combine these two concepts?

Starting in 2021, we have implemented a new, full cycle grant support service in which we are optimising these new services in an iterative implementation process. Our start off point was the introduction of our in-house grant writing support for EU proposals in combination with centralised EU project management.

Together we developed a pre-award process where the expertise of our grant advisers/writers is supplemented with in-depth implementation advice by an experienced project manager. By initiating this collaboration early on, we also streamline our GAP processes and ease the transition from pre-award to post-award after the projects get granted. To enhance our communication and dissemination activities pre- and post-award we set up a new collaboration with in-house science communication experts that work alongside our project managers with experience in EU dissemination management. We are now on the verge of introducing a new in-house communication and dissemination service that will formalise this new collaboration by setting up a dedicated DEC sub-team within our centralised project management pool.

Here we want to share our first experiences with rolling out, improving and expanding our new services and hear from the EARMA community to see how they collaborate and solve problems together to further improve our full cycle support.