After a meeting between Nick and representatives of the University on Friday it was clear that the co-ordination of the bid needed more time, capacity and expertise in order to pull together a suitable proposal.
It was highlighted by the University that other consortium with very strong proposals were being submitted to the and looking at what we had, at that point, in their view we were in no position to compete in this call.
They suggested an alternative strategy which is the development of the bid to a call in 2016 – to strengthen the call and the partnerships between members of the consortium
We would be happy to explore the current draft calls and bring the consortium together to discuss the options for a future bid.
My sincere apologies but the position of our institution is unchangable and our hands are tied
Good luck with the next steps and I hope we can seek to collaborate on a future bid
Ok, vote of no confidence here. For the records, I disagree on proposal strength – though of course no one is in a position to compete without doing serious work on the application writing.
Let’s the others reconnect and consider our options.
I don’t think under the current circumstances we have time to look for another (new) partner to lead the consortium, unless we think the rest of us will do - and dropping everything KITE-related. Does anyone think this will work?
If not, I suggest we start looking at other funding opportunities, right now I’m browsing through the Horizon 2020 site to see if there is anywhere else our proposal could fit…
I guess our colleagues have considered all options before taking that decision. Putting up an EC project is always difficult, one reason being we need to mature both the concepts and their implementation into tasks and subtasks in quite a short timeframe, let aside finding the right partners. Then put everything down into words in the most attractive and convincing way.
Any already formed consortium certainly has a competitive advantage when running for the call. For that reason, I personally would be interested in working around the project anyway to mature the concept, and my view of it. I don’t know to what extent this is feasible without funding (which means no extra personnel, for us at least).
Guy, that is very generous. We said from the get go that we would look for various plans B, and some of us are looking around already.
What do you mean by “any already formed consortium certainly has a competitive advantage when running for the call”? Do you mean that we, as an already formed consortium, have a competitive advantage? In running for what call?