P.A.P.A (pre and post award system) Implementation
Tue, 21 Jul 2015 02:00:00 BST
The Research and Enterprise pre and post award support teams have been working with the Finance/Agresso team on the development of a new IT based system for the development and management of proposals for external funding to support research and enterprise activity.
The P.A.P.A (pre and post award) system has been designed to take a proposal for external funding through from first initiation, through full costing, internal peer review and internal sign off by the School prior to submission to the funder. The same system will then also be used for the post award processes once the project has secured funding – including budget monitoring, claims and reporting.
Following an extensive consultation process involving staff from all schools, and a pilot of the new system with Computing and Engineering, we are now entering the “go live” phase and meeting with the research administration teams in each school to facilitate full operational use of the system from the start of the new financial year – from 1 August 2015.
What will this mean for the schools?
- From 1 August, ALL costs for externally funded Research and Enterprise activity will be developed and processed using PAPA
- PI/School can do quick global costings to check financial viability of a project before full development
- PI can work with pre-award contact or possibly school finance staff to create full costs for applications
- PI/School can see current progress/state of play of their draft costing easily – all accessing the same current version as the pre-award team
- The internal approval process of sign-off by central Pre-award, PI and Dean will all be done through workflows on the system – all involved can see where it is in the system. No more paper copies with written (‘wet’) signatures.
- System also will record peer-review process and progress this through workflows – linked to the costing approval
- The transition to approved project and post award management and reporting will be simpler – all budgets set up through workflows with project numbers automatically generated.
- School finance staff and Deans will have easier access to full reporting on their projects at all stages – pre and post award
Over the next two weeks, communications will go out to all staff about the new system and access and training will be scheduled for all schools. A brief presentation outlining the project and process so far is available here: PAPA please feel free to use this to disseminate and cascade this information within your schools and research groups and encourage your research active community to engage with the process. Contact details for any questions are shown in the presentation attached.
Updates will be announced in the week prior to full implementation.
