WP Leader: Jean-Louis Peyraud (INRA)

The coordination and overall management of the MULTISWARD project will utilize the project management expertise of two partner institutions (partner 1 INRA and 15 INRA Transfert).

The overall coordination will be the responsibility of INRA who will be the legal entity responsible for all contractual arrangements and reporting to the EC, while INRA Transfert (an INRA subsidiary specialised in management of European research and development project) will carry out the operational technical and financial management. INRA Transfert will be in charge of the operational management, the day-to-day administrative and financial administration (collecting information from the partners, consolidation of management reports, monitoring of expenses against budget allocations, consolidation of financial summary sheets, etc.); while the administration of payments from the EC and the transfer of funds to the partners will be managed by the coordinator, INRA.

In the first 3 months a range of activities will focus on establishing the rules for efficient management of this project (collaborative workspace and project management guidelines).

The overall management plan designed by this project is aimed at achieving four main objectives:

• Co-ordination of scientific and financial activities according to the work plan;
• Monitoring results to control their scientific quality regarding the fulfilment of the planned objectives, quality of the result, timing, spent resources and worldwide state-of-the-art;
• Efficiency of the organization setup to support the project, with special attention paid to financial, logistics, information, coordination issues, quality and conformity to EC rules and procedures;
• Prepare the financial and technical reports for the Commission.