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March 2014

DATE: 04 March 2014

TIME: 10:00 – 12:00

LOCATION: Wolfson Research Exchange, Room 1 & 2, Library

Minutes and Action Points

1) Draft WMS Research Project Internal Kick Off Meetings.

Deborah Ranger presented the WMS initiative for Internal Research Project Kick off meetings. The Network agreed that the agenda looked comprehensive. There was good feedback from the trail meeting that ran previously.

Discussion around the topic of project finance profiling and the recent push by central finance for project spend forecasts and the impact of flat lining.

It was suggested that the Kick off meeting should include reference to Financial Forecast Planning and profiling in response to recent developments in the central Fianance team to align predicted research income with research project spend.

In addition it was agreed that this sort of initiative would be useful as a central resource and could be made available to the wider university community.

ACTION POINT: Yvonne Burrell to inform wide university community/PiPs Network of the Finance Office agenda for information on project profiling etc.

ACTION POINT: Yvonne Burrell to send out information on how to find out who respective DST contacts are if they are not known.

2) Draft WMS Research Project Manager Induction/Training Programme

The network reviewed and commented on the draft proposal for the WMS Research Project Manager Induction/Training Programme.

Recommended to include meeting with respective central finance contact/Finance Manager for overview of impact of project forecasting on 5 year plans etc.

There was discussion about the important on IT communication platforms and this should be emphasised in the training. Need to agree how will communicate with partners and through which medium. Training in the different platforms may need to be provided/included.

It was noted that the University are potentially looking to revoke the WebEx license software and replace to Microsoft Lync. Members are advised to raise any concerns about the loss of WebEx to IT Services.

It was suggested that an internal Project Management course may not be the most beneficial form of training but that all new Project Managers should be supported to go on relevant specific external training courses (eg. EU project Magnement courses).

It was recommended that an Online Research Project Management Resource be established, providing online training material, important contact lists ets. DR will investigate whether this is something that the EU Strategy Team could host (or whether EU Post Award should develop their site accordingly).

3) Update on EU Electronic Timesheet Proposal

MP and ED reported that RSS support for integrating the Timesheet system into the new Ideate system has been withdrawn and there is currently no financial or sponsorship support available. THE working group has taken this as far as possible.

Yvonne suggested that the Finance Office may be interested however not sure whether this is now a priority.

It came to light that WMG are currently developing their own electronic timesheet system.

ACTION POINT: investigate WMG timeframes with idea to see if the university could adapt their system once established.

4) Next Meeting

Organisers: Malgorzata Czerwiec and Maxine Haddleton

Possible Date: June 2014

Topic: Open Access

Rationale: Now that all project related activity must be published via Open Access the Network would benefit from general information on Open Access, how this can be costed for in project proposals and potential alternative funding for this activity.

Download PDF Version of Minutes  

Record of Attendance