Organisation

Project Coordinator

The Project Coordinator, GEONARDO will manage the project in its administrative, scientific and financial activities. Summary of the Coordinator’s tasks and responsibilities:

- Monitoring progress. Encompassing general coordination activities, devoted to keeping the project on track and on schedule, and the exploitation related activities.

- Collection and review of financial and technical reports from all partners. Each team will be directing their own work but will discuss all administrative and technical aspects directly with the Coordinator. Overall financial organisation, preparation of cost statements and execution of EU accounting rules will also be the Coordinator’s task. Financial reports will be the responsibility of the administrator of each partner, but for the overall management the Coordinator will be in charge.

- Handling payments of the EC contributions to the consortium partners and maintain liaison with the Commission for all contractual and administrative aspects of the project. Payments from the Commission will be forwarded to the partners without delay according to the rules laid down in the FP7 Grant Agreement.

- Organisation of the theoretical aspects related to the objectives of the particular Work Packages by separate and of the network as a whole. This is especially vital in case of WP4 where work can only be implemented if work in the previous two phases (EO and ground-based biomass assessment) is carried out in a timely fashion. Continuous monitoring of work here will ensure that the progress of each single team is consistent with the overall aims of the project, and that the objectives are achieved in due time.

- Developing future strategies for the continuation of the project activities, monitoring the links with the European Commission, the EO sector, environmental/RES groups and other EU-funded projects in related ENV/ENERGY project areas (also including agriculture for non-food applications in KBBE topics and priorities).

- Supervising the information provided to the partners trough the website. The website serves as the main platform of the project, but it will be also an instrument to keep partners in permanent contact. The Coordinator will maintain and update a separate part of the website regularly (accessible by exclusive passwords) and will ensure that in addition to the core services adequate links are established to databanks, personal profiles, industrial platforms and latest relevant results related to the network.

Workpackage Manager

The consortium has nominated a Workpackage Manager for each workpackage. WP Managers have been selected based on their past experiences with the management/coordination of EC initiatives at a similar scale. She/He is responsible for the technical/administrative co-ordination of the work within the assigned work package and also responsible for all the specific WP results being available on time. An obligation of each WP Manager (as it will be laid down in the Consortium Agreement) is to report any possible deviations from the Work Programme to the Coordinator in terms of time or content.

Project Steering Committee

A Project Steering Committee will be set up, including the Project Coordinator and project management representatives from the project partners. In order to keep the committee on a functional level it is proposed that only WP Managers are automatically represented, other partners will elect representatives based on their geographical locations (e.g. one representative for the WBC region, etc). The Steering Committee will audit project progress, define project standards and agree on all project policies, which will be formally and explicitly stated. As the project has a broad strategic interest for the European Commission a representative of the EC (e.g. DG Research, DG Agriculture or DG JRC) will also be invited with a full voting right. Authorised representatives of the Steering Committe will meet at regular intervals (for practical reasons immediately after the consortium meetings) with the following mandate:
- Review and evaluate project progress and approve changes if deemed to be necessary
- Ensure that the project maintains its relevance with the Project Programme and with the FP7 ENERGY Work Programme in general
- Be aware of other relevant activities in other current EC (FP6/FP7 and other) projects and to effect an introduction if appropriate
- Resolve technical, administration or contractual issues not yet resolved by other means.

Project Partners

The Consortium will consist of 16 Project Partners, each having the following responsibilities:
- Delivering data, results and other contribution as agreed during the development of the proposal concept, as laid down in the FP7 Grant Agreement, the Consortium Agreement and decided at the Steering Committee meetings. Local advertising, assessing professional and public interest locally, communicating with local authorities and other interested and affected parties will also be the partners’ tasks.
- Managing the execution of and participating actively in the implementation of respective WPs as indicated later in this proposal. In this case the leader of the team responsible for the coordination of a given WP will act as managing coordinator in terms of supporting aspects and reinforcing assessment work. WP managers will report directly to the Coordinator.
- Dissemination of results locally in English and the teams’ native language.

 

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