Horizon 2020 Proposals
Horizon 2020
Mr. Dan Kaszeta, Managing Director of Strongpoint has significant experience with the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme. Horizon 2020 is a very large European Union programme, spending many billions of Euros on research and innovation across many areas of public interest. There is a lot of money available to fund good ideas. However, the H2020 programme gets flooded with thousands of proposals. The first phase of H2020 received 31,115 proposals. A rigid evaluation scheme is used to rate the proposals. Panels of external experts systematically evaluate proposals on the criteria of excellence, impact and implementation.
Of the first 100 H2020 calls, only 4,315 of the 31,115 proposals passed the evaluation process and were approved for funding, a rate of under 15%. Pass rates vary somewhat from call to call. (Full statistics are available here.) From a practical perspective, this means that a proposal not only must not be merely adequate, it has to receive a very high score from the evaluators. Given the strict evaluation scheme and the somewhat pedantic way in which it is applied by the European Commission and the external evaluators, preparing a winning proposal is a difficult task.
Why Strongpoint can help?
In 2014 and 2015, Dan Kaszeta served as an external expert evaluator and rapporteur for dozens of proposals in the “Securing Society” portion of the Horizon 2020 programme, in areas such as aviation security, cargo screening, border security, and disaster preparedness. He also assisted as rapporteur for a number of cyber-security reviews. Dan’s experience with the evaluation process and its idiosyncrasies gives him a deep well of knowledge of common mistakes and errors, as well as insight into how a good proposal can be made better. Mr. Kaszeta will lend his expertise to those who are preparing H2020 proposals. If necessary, appropriate NDAs will be signed.
As the evaluation process is standardised across the various disciplines, Mr. Kaszeta’s ability to help is not limited to security-related projects. A very high percentage of the commonly encountered errors that eliminate proposals from serious consideration are not related to the technical content, but are related to formatting, writing, or failure to properly address the evaluation criteria.
Seminars
Starting in the first quarter of 2016, Mr. Kaszeta will lead a series of seminars on “How to Write an Effective H2020 Proposal”. Please H2020 Seminar for a sample programme for a seminar.
Current plans are for seminars in the UK, France, and Poland. Watch this space for further details. Contact us if you would like a specialised seminar for your organisation or group.
Consultancy
A seminar can only go so far to help with a proposal effort. Strongpoint can provide any or all of the following services with regard to H2020:
- Seminar and writing workshop tailored to your specific requirements
- Assistance with finding complementary consortium members
- Critiques of proposal drafts
- “Red Team” exercise – assembling a panel of three experts to serve as a simulated evaluation team to provide skilled criticism of the proposal
- Proposal writing on a day-rate or fixed price basis.
Contact: h2020@strongpointsecurity.co.uk
