Membership Alert - Bulletin May/June 2011
By Aamir Khalid, Director of Technology and Paul Woollin, Director of Research
Over the past 10 years TWI has been working with a number of its Industrial Members and providing a service to access funding from both European (Framework 5, 6 and 7) and UK (TSB) funding bodies to develop innovative technologies on behalf of its Members.
TWI is aiming to expand this collaborative service over the next few years.
Its aim for this collaborative service is to offer our Industrial Members the best grant funding advice for attracting external public funding for their research and development projects. TWI would provide them with a complete grant consultancy service, from identifying appropriate ideas and relevant grants, to advising on complying with all the requirements of the funding body. This focuses on areas that align with TWI's expertise and areas of research interest. As part of the service, TWI will:
Confidentially review our Industrial Members' technology development needs and R&D programmes, from an independent perspective
Based on TWI's expertise, we would review their technology development needs and R&D programmes to select project concepts that have the best chance of success. Through workshops we would identify any long term R&D needs and aspirations that align with TWI's areas of research interest and technical competence with a view to developing an R&D programme based on leveraging external funding.
This would assist our Members to develop a robust R&D roadmap by helping them identify their medium to long term product, technology research and development needs.
Create a project consortium and write the grant application
This would include identifying prospective researchers and supply chain partners, on an international basis, that are able to add value, reduce the costs or speed up the delivery of R&D projects. The consortium would be assembled with the Member to ensure it meets their needs.
Contract negotiation, project management and delivery
Once approved for funding, TWI would offer to undertake the management of the contract negotiation process by taking on the consortium's paperwork burden that is usually associated with the issuing of a contract from the funding body.
Therefore, TWI would provide a service to its Industrial Members by:
- Assistance in formulating a 5-10 year product development strategy.
- Helping Industrial Members access leveraged funding for the development of new products.
- Developing supply chains for these new products.
- Guiding Industrial Members through the complex funding mechanisms.
- Writing high quality proposals.
The sources for this leveraged funding are The EU Framework 7 programme, TSB and many others.
