Consultancy for pre-award support: training, application & interview preparation for externally funded research grants
UiB aims to increase income from external sources such as the Research Council of Norway and the EU. We aim to submit a a higher number of applications and also achieve higher success rates. Resources are therefore being made available to researchers to help provide relevant training (for example in application writing), interview training, and supplementary external support to prepare grant applications.
Main content
The University of Bergen has entered into a framework agreement with 8 suppliers to supplement internal administrative resources in providing pre-award assistance and training related to research funding. The agreement applies from 1st September 2021 - 30th August 2025.
Services are split into nine categories. Four groups cover 'pre-award' (application phase) services for specific funding programmes. A further five categories cover training to support researchers to prepare successful funding applications.
All pre-award services and training for EU-programmes can be co-financed through PES support.
Categories and companies
Services
| Supplier |
A1 Pre-award consultancy Excellence programmes European Research Council (ERC):Starting/Consolidator/Advanced/Synergy Grant; Proof-of-Concept Research Council of Norway (RCN): Center of Excellence (SFF); Ground-breaking Research opt.: other funding programmes | Ciaotech Srl/PNO Enspire Sciences Ltd Innovayt Norge AS Trend 2000 Ltd |
A2 Pre-award consultancy Marie-Sklodovska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks, Postdoctoral Fellowships, RISE, COFUND
| Ciaotech Srl/PNO Innovayt Norge AS Nordic Innovators Trend 2000 Ltd |
A3 Pre-award consultancy Collaborative Research&Innovation Actions HORIZON Europe (HE) Pillars 2, 3 HE-associated schemes (JPI, European Partnerships) RCN: Center of Research-based Innovation (SFI); Researcher Project opt.: other funding programmes | Ciaotech Srl/PNO Innovayt Norge AS Nordic Innovators Trend 2000 Ltd |
A4 Pre-award consultancy ERASMUS+ Centralized Actions
| Ciaotech Srl/PNO |
B1 Training ERC all ERC schemes
| Ciaotech/PNO, Trend 2000 Ltd, Yellow Research BV |
B2 Training Marie-Sklodovska-Curie Actions (MSCA) all MSCA schemes
| Innovayt, Trend 2000 Ltd |
B3 Training HORIZON Europe Pillar 2 and/or 3 Topic as needed, e.g. Writing competitive applications for Horizon Europe collaborative funding schemes; Focus Impact: How to develop and write the Impact section, etc. | Ciaotech Srl/PNO, Europa Media Group |
B4 Interview training ERC and other
| Ciaotech Srl/PNO, Yellow Research BV (ERC, no Synergy Grant) |
B5 General pre-award training e.g. General grant-writing, Train-the-trainer | Ciaotech Srl/PNO ERINN Innovation Trend 2000 Ltd |
How to order?
If you wish to receive support in any of the 9 categories, you must purchase it from one of the named companies. Services may only be purchased from other sources if all of the above companies have declared themselves unable to meet your request for support.
Buying services which fall outside of the 9 categories (A1-B5) is not covered by this framework agreement, and should comply with regular routines for purchases of services.
You can choose freely from the companies inside each category, though as assignments should be allocated evenly between the suppliers in each category, it could be useful to consider which supplier is best suited for each assignment, rather than using the same supplier as a matter of course.
If you are buying services on behalf of a department or faculty, please choose one of the companies specified to provide services for that category of support. You can order services by completing the call-off order form, adding a short description of the assigment (what it should include) and the maximum budget. Once you have completed the call-off order form, you can contact your chosen company and, if they have availability to support you, send them the form to complete and agree support. Once this is done, please contact your purchaser ("innkjøper") so that a purchase order can be registered, approved and sent to the company.
If using PES money, you should therefore take VAT into account. For non-Norwegian suppliers, please inform the purchaser that this is a service from abroad so that the VAT-code is set to 3T in Unit4ERP. Teaching services are VAT exempted. Please notify the purchaser when a course is ordered, as this is VAT exempted as training/teaching. The purchaser can set the VAT code to 0 and the supplier will then invoice without VAT. For orders that include both training and consultancy, only the training is VAT exempted. More information on VAT at UiB, is to be found here (same lenke som over – finnes bare på norsk).
Note: For pre-award consultancy, each supplier has provided hourly rates. Prices for courses and training are given per course.
Follow-up of the framework agreement
If the quality of any services ordered and provided under the framework agreement fail to meet expected standard or is felt to be of poor quality, please take this up with your supplier in the first instance. If this does not resolve the issue, please contact the administrator of the framework agreement. This can be done via the Contract Catalogue (contract register of UiB) – reference ANSK-0012-21. Please choose “register deviation”, fill in with information on the specific problem, and return.
Companies/suppliers
(UiB network)
Administrative contact
Corina Guder (Division of Research and Innovation)
Kitty A. Tverrå (Financial Services)
