Inform researcher: Organise internal and external kick-off meeting

China

Beijing

It is good practice to organise a kick-off meeting before the start of the project to refine project goals and plans, explain grant stipulations, and more importantly, introduce project partners to each other, which will prove helpful for future co-operation. Meetings can be small and short for individual grant projects, or large with many participants for consortium grant projects. A consortium meeting usually lasts for at least two days and requires a lot of preparation and organisation.

Project Desk can assist with organising and running both kinds of meetings.

In the internal kick off meeting

Project Desk and Project Control will tell you, the researcher, what is required to fulfil the conditions of the grant. This is come in the form of a handbook which includes:

Time records
Reporting requirements
Deadlines for submission of reports
Project personnel
Legal issues
Grant eligibility

This kind of meeting usually lasts no more than two hours.

External kick off meeting

An external kick off meeting is held for large consortium projects where RSM is co-ordinator and marks an important milestone for the project. It will be the first time the work package is worked out in detail, and the first time management issues are discussed. It is a combination of a technical meeting and a steering committee (or general assembly) meeting and often lasts for two days, so also serves the purpose of team-building. The steering committee meeting can take place at the end of the kick off meeting to formally adopt decisions and points of action.

For projects in receipt of European grants, make sure you invite the Project Officer (the official contact person at the European Commission) for the first part of the meeting. As part of your preparations, draft a handbook describing management procedures and legal, financial, administrative and reporting requirements, which can be distributed to all consortium members at the meeting. You can make this handbook a required item for management activities. Project Desk can provide you with an example of such a handbook, and can also produce the handbook for you.

Project Desk can help you prepare, organise, and host a kick off the meeting. The logistics of the meeting are organised by the RSM project co-ordinator’s department secretary.