Initiate a Proposal

Applicants will need to make sure that the project is eligible for research funding. You will need to:

• Read the funder's guidance to check that you are eligible to apply
• Check that the project meets the definition of research and has defined project scope
• Make sure that you are eligible to act as Principal Investigator (PI)
• If this is a new funder to the College, refer to Research Security guidance and seek advice on any risks involved in working with the funder

Project and Department Deadlines

Due to the volume of applications received and the number of considerations required to ensure the best quality applications are submitted to the funders, we ask all academics to liaise with their section administration as early as possible, and in line with their Departmental timescales, to start to build up their application and costing on Worktribe. There are a number of deadlines you need to be aware of including:

• the funder's deadline (which will be listed in the funder's guidance document)
• internal project deadlines, if your application is being led by another organisation.
• internal Departmental deadlines for preparation of costings - speak to your Section Manager or Research Manager.
• internal deadlines for College or Faculty Letters of Support. Contact your Department's Research Manager or the Research Strategy team for further guidance.

JRO Deadlines

These are in place to allow sufficient time for JRO Pre-award to conduct their financial assessment and raise any queries, for Departments to be able to respond to those queries, and time for any budget amendments required to be made and re-approved by all parties, where necessary.

Five-Day Rule

An application budget should be submitted into Worktribe workflow and reach JRO Pre-award for financial assessment a minimum of five working days prior to the funder deadline.

Funder portal Submission

We recommend that academics plan to submit applications that require institutional approval via a funding portal 48 hours prior to the funding deadline.

As soon as Departments are aware of a proposal in development a Worktribe record for the application should be created. This includes any instances where JRO Pre-award support is required prior to budget creation, for example, an Expression of Interest requiring institutional authorisation.

You'll need to include some initial information to create the record. Worktribe has mandatory fields required to create a new Project record on Worktribe: Project Title, Project Dates, Project Type, Project Activity Type, Funder, Project Lead (PI) and Lead Org Unit (Section). In addition you will need to populate the following fields so that the Faculty can identify the proposal:

• Name of Call
• URL of Call
• Funder Deadline: If a proposal does not have a specified deadline, project teams should put an estimated deadline for when they intend to submit, so that the proposal is picked up in forthcoming searches for proposals.
• Project Manager: This can be used to identify the point of contact for the pre-award submission. If left blank JRO pre-award will contact the user who created the Worktribe as the point of contact.

JRO Pre-Award use Worktribe dashboard searches to identify any Faculty of Medicine bids that have reached JRO approval stage, and any bids with a funder deadline set within a specified date range, normally within 21 days. After creation of the Worktribe record, Departments should notify JRO Pre-award of the proposal.

The minimum detail required is a link to the Worktribe record and the Worktribe fields required for initial setup. The Faculty Proposal Development Tracker has an email template that captures the relevant data from Worktribe to be included in the email to the Pre-award central mailbox.

Upon receipt of the above information, the bid will be assigned to relevant member of the JRO Pre award team, using the Pre-award Liaison field within the Worktribe record.

At notification stage the Pre-award liaison will review the funding opportunity to confirm that it meets the College requirements for the classification of research, and identify any key funder terms and conditions for the funding call. If the funder's terms and conditions lie outside the College's preferred terms, the application is sent to JRO Contracts for review; applications which fall within preferred terms continue to the Department for costing.

Your Pre-award liaison can offer operational support and expert advice and guidance on Pre-Award processes and funder terms and conditions. Conversations should commence between the PI, section administration and JRO Pre-award at the earliest possible stage to ensure the necessary due diligence, governance and compliance has been considered in line with the funders' call conditions and college policies prior to the final submission to the funder.

Proposals submitted for approval without notification

Any proposal submitted into Workflow for review without prior notification will be assigned a Pre-award liaison at bid approval stage and will be reviewed based on the information provided in the Worktribe. This ensures that all proposals submitted into Workflow are reviewed once received. Please note that additional time may be required by JRO Pre-award to conduct initial background checks on the funder terms and conditions, particularly for new funders or unique funding opportunities.