Presentation by Catherine Gater, Project Manager, at the Europeana Sounds Kick-off meeting in London, 18 February 2014

1. Project Governance, Reporting and
Administration
18/02/14, British Library St Pancras

2. Content
 Project Governance
 Project Reporting
 Administration
 Financial Reporting

3. Project Governance

4. Management structure

5. Project Management Board
The Project Management Board (PMB) for Europeana Sounds:
 Is empowered to take decisions for the project as a whole
 Includes the Project Coordinator, Technical Director, Project
Manager and all Work Package Leaders
 Meets physically bi-annually and monthly by telcon
 Negotiates and finalises the Consortium Agreement
 Maintains the Project Guide
 Assists the Project Coordinator in preparing for EC reviews

6. General Assembly
The General Assembly for Europeana Sounds
 Comprises one member per project partners (main rep or
deputy)
 Meets annually face to face
 Ratifies any proposed changes to the Project Plan and
Budget
 Approves changes to the Grant Agreement, DoW or
Consortium membership
 Approves all progress reports prior to submission to the EC

7. Consortium Agreement
The Consortium Agreement for Europeana Sounds:
 Is an agreement between all Consortium partners (does not
include the EC)
 Includes the main guidelines for cooperation and conflict
resolution
 Current version is based on the DESCA model
 All partners protect the required confidentiality or IPRs
contributed to or produced by the project
 Currently being discussed in the PMB

8. Advisory Boards
2 boards will be established
 Advisory Board
• Will meet face to face twice in M15 and M23
• Will consider project progress, exploitation trends and policy
• Members selected for their expertise and networks
 User Advisory Panel (UAP)
• WP7 leads T7.5 Project Evaluation to work with the UAP
• Includes 5 experts representing the target groups for the project
e.g. consumers, creative industries, publishers, researchers and
memory institutions (3 internal, 2 external)
• Will review all Deliverables relevant to end-user services e.g.
WP2 and WP4

9. Project Reporting

10. Reporting your Activities
There will be a number of project reports where we will ask for
contributions:
 Quarterly reports (internal)
• Include summary of effort per WP, travel costs, sub contracting
costs, other direct costs
 Bi-annual reports (submitted to EC)
• Formal reports to the EC, including financial estimates of
expenditure, effort consumed and summary of activities
 Periodic reports (submitted to EC)
• End of year reports to the EC, including annual costs submitted
via the Form Cs, and summary of progress by the Work
Packages

11. Quarterly reports
 Progress overview of WPs and tasks
 Main contribution to the project during the quarter, including
achievements
 Issues that might have or did affect achievements, delayed results
or the delivery of Deliverables and Milestones
 Meetings held or attended
 Project related publications
 Summary of effort: consumed per person per WP
 Summary of costs: travel, sub-contracting, other direct costs
 Due by the 15th of the month following the end of the quarter

12. Bi-annual reports
 Formal documents submitted to the European Commission
 Summary of the previous 2 quarters
 Include
• Activity and progress summaries per Work Package, including issues
• Deliverables and Milestones submitted or achieved
• Events held or attended and publications
• Progress towards project indicators
• Estimates of effort consumed (from timesheets)
• Expenditure on travel, sub-contracting, other direct costs
 Deliverables D7.3 Interim Progress reports (M7), D7.6
(M19), D7.8 (M31)
 Usual Deliverable review process (see later slides)
 Submitted by the end of the project month the report is due

13. Periodic reports
 Formal documents submitted to the European Commission
 Summary of all four quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4)
 Include
• Activity and progress summaries per Work Package, including issues
• Deliverables and Milestones submitted or achieved
• Events held, attended and publications
• Progress towards project indicators
• Effort consumed (from timesheets) and analysis
• Expenditure of project budget and analysis
• Future planning
 Usual Deliverable review process (see later slides)
 Submitted within 60 days of the end of each project period

14. Administration

15. Admin Tools
There are a number of project tools either in use or being considered:
 Basecamp
• Project communications – new projects set up per WP and for the PMB
 Dropbox
• File sharing
 Google docs
• Collaborative documents, now set up at europeana.sounds@gmail.com
 Mailing lists (held in Basecamp at the moment)
 Europeana Pro site
• Final versions of documents
 Project wiki?

16. Quality Assurance Plan
 D7.1 due in M2
 Includes:
• Official legal documents (links)
• Terms of reference for project boards
• Document management procedures
• Procedures for Deliverable approval
• Locations of templates
• Summary of reporting
• Risk register
• Project collaborations
 To be circulated to the PMB initially

17. Document Templates
There will be a number of project templates published in the next
weeks:
 Deliverable document
 Deliverable review document
 Milestone documents (if applicable)
 Project presentations (with logo)
 Monthly timesheets
 Quarterly summary financial reports
 Bi-annual reports
 Periodic reports

18. Deliverables Review Process
REVIEW
REVISION
APPROVAL
AND
SUBMISSION
Three stage review process:
 Step 1: Initial review (one month prior to
submission)
• Outcome: review document with
recommendations for revision, ranked in
order of importance
 Step 2: Revision
• Outcome: revised document, and a
response to the review comments
 Step 3: Approval and submission
• Coordinator, WP Leader and Technical
Director approve before submission to EC

19. Performance Monitoring
 Outlined in Part B of the DoW (Table 3.2b)
 16 indicators, 4 or 5 per Work Package
 Annual targets set to be achieved per project year
 Will be tracked by WP Leaders through the bi-annual reports
 Reported at the project reviews annually and in the Periodic
Reports
 Some of these are quite challenging!

20. Project Risks
 Risks are monitored by the PMB
 Issues affected project delivery are reported quarterly, bi-
annually and summarised in the Periodic Reports
 Risks are ranked according to their impact (low/medium/high)
and their probability (low/medium/high)
 Overall rated red/amber/green based on these 2 factors i.e. a
red risk may be very likely to occur, or may be unlikely but
high impact
 Areas of risk include content related, technical, operational
and perception

21. Financial Reporting

22. Finance Overview from the EC
Summary of the main points from the EC presentation:
 Each partner maintains their accounts for the project and
documentation to justify the costs
 Materials can be audited by the EC during the project and up
to 5 years afterwards
 Local accounting rules apply
 Time charged to the project MUST be recorded i.e. on
timesheets
 Costs must be necessary, incurred during the
project, identifiable and verifiable, recorded in the accounts
and value for money

23. Financial Reporting
Summary of areas to be covered by Roger Gavin, BL Finance
Division:
 Funding
 Reporting deadlines
 Eligible costs
 Timesheets
 Quarterly reports
 Audit certification

24. Thank you
Catherine Gater
Catherine.Gater@bl.uk