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Disclaimer: the views expressed are purely

those of the writer and may not in any

circumstances be regarded as stating an

official position of the REA.

http://fseg.gre.ac.uk

Prof Ed GaleaFire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG)

University of Greenwich

PAYMENTS & AUDIT

Rodrigo Gutiérrez Domínguez, Research Programme Administrator

Radu Diaconescu, Project Officer

MSCA RISE 2018 Coordinators' Day, 17-18 January, 2019

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OVERVIEW

1. Unit costs

2. Payments

3. Audit

4. Issues that emerged in GEO-SAFE project

5. Key messages

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UNIT COSTS

• Eligible staff on secondment have the right for full payment

of Cat A funds (€ 2100 per month of secondment)

• Not based on real or actual or incurred costs.

Principle:

Calculation:

• € 4600 x number of months staff member spent on

secondment

• for split stays a pro-rata unit cost of 1/30 will be

reimbursed for each day, but secondments will only be

considered eligible if multiple of 30 days .

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UNIT COSTS/MONTH

Marie Skłodowska-Curie

Action

Category A

Staff member unit cost *

person/month

Top-up allowance

Category B

Institutional unit cost *

person/month

B1

Research, training and

networking costs

B2

Management and

indirect costs

Research and Innovation

Staff Exchange 2.100 1800 700

*These unit costs are subject to a funding rate of 100% and no

country coefficients apply.

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RESEARCHER DECLARATION

• Outgoing secondments of its own staff

• Incoming secondments from a TC partner

• Provide personal details of the secondee and important details of the

secondment such as the period(s), involved WPs, etc.

• Researcher Declarations needs to be submitted within 20 days after the

secondment start.

• Create and submit only one Researcher Declaration per staff member

visiting a host organization – Additional periods can be added per visit.

• In case of split stay, add a new period in the Researcher Declaration

already created for the secondment.

Each beneficiary declares:

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UNIT COSTS - CATEGORY A

• Keep supporting documents as for actual costs

• Cover costs for travel and subsistence during secondment

• Does not replace the entitlements of the researcher at the

sending institution during secondment

• Can be paid directly to researcher or reimbursed based on

bills/receipt

Used exclusively for the eligible staff member during

secondment

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UNIT COSTS - CATEGORY B

- Reimbursement is directly linked to the execution and

eligibility of the secondments

- To be used for R&I activities from Annex I

- Can be distributed in Consortium according to needs

- Cash flow agreed in the Consortium Agreement and/or

Partnership Agreement if the case

- No need to keep supporting documents like in the case of

actual costs

- Can be used to top-up category A for expensive

secondments

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PROJECT PAYMENTS

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PAYMENTS – TRANSFERS TO TC

Distribution of funds towards TC to be agreed in the

Partnership Agreement

• Beneficiaries may transfer funds to TC

partners;

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AUDIT – ELIGIBILITY OF SECONDMENT

• The 1 month formal link between staff member and sending

organisation prior to secondment

• The duration of the secondment declared

• 100% dedication to the project during secondment

• Category A fully used for the seconded staff member

Each beneficiary must be able to prove:

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AUDIT – KEEPING RECORDS

Each beneficiary must keep records related to:

• all seconded staff members

• hosted TC researchers entitled to funding

Documents must be kept in accordance with internal

accounting rules and practices of beneficiaries

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STANDARD AUDIT DOCUMENTS• Evidence that the secondments actually took place within the dates

reported.

• Evidence that the staff member was eligible and fulfilling the 6 months

(full time equivalent) prior involvement requirement.

• Evidence that the staff member was paid the full Part A funds €2,000 to

cover travel & subsistence costs.

• Other standard documents kept on file for audit purposes include grant

agreement, consortium agreement, financial statements, bank

statements, remittances, original invoices, staff expense forms, original

receipts, payments to partners, procurement of services, agendas,

minutes of meetings, participation lists, papers and presentations.

• H2020 MSCA RISE requirement is that these documents are kept on

file for a period of 5 years following project closure (payment of

balance).

• UoG require 6 years or longer if a requirement of the grant.

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GEO-SAFE PROJECT

• Four year project, started in May 2016 and ending in April 2020.

• Project cost: €1,386,000.00. EU contribution: €1,080,000.00.

• 308 person months of secondments

• 18 partners from 7 countries, including 3 partners from Australia

• Funded by MARIE CURIE Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE).

• The creation of a research and development network having as bases

researchers from various specialities and wildfire agencies.

• Major outcomes are implementing solutions and software tools in:

• fire suppression,

• life and property protection, and

• Management and training.

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GEO-SAFE CONSORTIUM – 18 PARTNERS, 7 COUNTRIES

Full Name CountryUNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH United Kingdom

ENTENTE POUR LA FORÊT MÉDITERRANÉENNE France

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DELL'AQUILA Italy

UNIVERSITE CLERMONT AUVERGNE France

UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID Spain

UNIVERSITE PARIS DAUPHINE France

UNIVERSITE DE GENEVE Switzerland

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PERUGIA Italy

SERVICE DEPARTEMENTAL D'INCENDIE ET DE SECOURS DE LA HAUTE-CORSE France

UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE Netherlands

UNIVERSITE DE TECHNOLOGIE DE COMPIEGNE France

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS France

FUNDACIO D'ECOLOGIA DEL FOC I GESTIO D'INCENDIS PAU COSTA ALCUBIERRE Spain

*CONSEJERIA DE MEDIO AMBIENTE Y ORDENACION DEL TERRITORIO Spain

*POLITECNICO DI TORINO Italy

BUSHFIRE AND NATURAL HAZARDS CRC LIMITED Australia

UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Australia

ROYAL MELBOURNE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY*RMIT UNIVERSITY Australia

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KEY ISSUES - SYGMA

• In general the payment process works very well. The pre-financing

provides an adequate float for partners at the start of the project,

interim payments are paid following reporting periods, with only 10%

held back until the end plus the 5% held in the Guarantee Fund.

• WISH: It would be useful if the Project Co-Ordinator had access to

partner’s bank details via SyGMa to simplify data collection.

• BEST PRACTICE: Aim to have the grant agreement and the

consortium agreement signed in parallel.

• BEWARE: Delays with partners acceding to the grant agreement and

signing of the consortium agreement can have a knock on effect on the

project start up.

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KEY ISSUES – SYGMA IMPROVEMENTS• It would be useful if beneficiaries could make minor changes to

their secondment plan and specify split secondments directly on

SyGMa (e.g. one month secondment split in two parts).

• The researcher declarations should be automatically mapped to

the secondments numbers from the secondment plan – changing

one should automatically change the other.

• When dealing with hundreds of secondments, monitoring

secondment implementation could be made easier if the RDs

could be exported as an excel document from SyGMa - currently

this is a laborious manual operation.

• Secondment ids and RD ids can change if a beneficiary deletes or

modifies a secondment or RD in SyGMa which complicates the

secondment monitoring process (reconciling secondment plan

with RD).

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KEY ISSUES – ASSOCIATING RDS WITH

SECONDMENTS

• Snapshot below shows a typical secondment plan provided by beneficiaries

• Snapshot below shows a Researcher Declaration (RD) for beneficiary UTC.

• Fellow IDs/Researcher IDs don’t match because they currently don’t have to match

• Dates don’t match as this was changed by beneficiary

• How do we easily reconcile this, especially if it happens many times (this partner

only has 4 secondments, what if they had 20?)!

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KEY ISSUES – SECONDMENTS PART A FUNDS

• In many cases the Part A funds of €2k are insufficient to pay for

the real costs incurred especially when the secondments are in

Australia and also in Europe during the holiday season.

• However, if the cost of a secondment is under €2k threshold the

difference has to be paid to the researcher.

• For UoG staff this additional payment would be seen as benefit

to the researcher and would be subject to income tax.

• It would be helpful to have some flexibility to transfer balances

that have come in under the €2k threshold to the secondments

that have exceeded this threshold but this is currently not

allowed.

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KEY ISSUES – REDISTRIBUTION OF PART B FUNDS

• Currently the budget for organising workshops/conferences and project

coordination is obtained through an internal redistribution of the budget.

• However, this allocation is based on the successful completion of all the

secondments granted to the project.

• There is problematic because if all the secondments are not implemented then

the budgets available to the workshops/conferences and project coordination will

be reduced.

• Therefore, it would be helpful to have fixed budgets allocated for the

organization of workshops/conferences and project coordination that does not

depend on secondment implementation.

• We have resolved these issues by negotiating with the partners that regardless of

whether they perform all their secondments they will pay the fixed contributions

towards the project coordination and workshop/conference costs.

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KEY ISSUES – TC PARTNERS WITHOUT EU CONTRIBUTION

• Thus far, the Australian partners in GEO-SAFE have been unable to

secure funding to implement their secondments.

• Mitigations for this are as follows:

• Knowledge exchange takes place between Australian and EU

partners when the EU partners go on secondments to Australia.

• A number of virtual meetings (via skype) takes place regularly

between Australian and EU partners.

• The Australian partners are performing shorter visits to EU

partners based on the level of funding that is available to them.

• These mitigation measures have enabled the research and knowledge

exchange to take place smoothly.

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KEY ISSUES – DELAYS IN SECONDMENT IMPLEMENTATION

• Secondments can be delayed for various reasons.

• The Project Coordinator needs to review the secondment

implementation of the beneficiaries at regular intervals.

• A discussion needs to be held with beneficiaries that have considerable

delays in their secondment implementation.

• Beneficiaries with considerable delays in their secondment

implementation should be given options to reorganise/reschedule their

secondments to their benefit.

• They should also be encouraged to transfer their secondments to other

partners that are keen to receive more secondments to implement their

tasks.

• Currently in the GEO-SAFE project the SG has agreed that the second

payment should be withheld from those beneficiaries that have

considerable delays in their secondment implementation.

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TIPS FOR PROJECT COORDINATION• Monitor the secondment implementation of the consortium at regular intervals

and not just before the submission of periodic/progress reports.

• Encourage Work Package leaders to take an active role in monitoring the

secondment implementation in their Work Packages.

• When TC partners cannot obtain their own funds for implementing their

secondments, then the following can minimise the risks:

• organise virtual meetings between TC and EU partners,

• encourage EU partners to spend their Part B funds toward the travel

expenses of the TC partner and

• encourage TC partners to make shorter visits if long visits are difficult.

• The funding available for organising workshops/conferences and for project

coordination through an internal redistribution should be fixed and independent

of the secondment implementation of the consortium.

• Use social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp for informal networking

between secondees to share their experience on their secondments and to help

future secondees by providing tips on accommodation, visa applications and

travel to the host countries.

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SUMMARY

• Reimbursements are based on unit costs, but cat. A should

be treated as actual costs

• Cat A used exclusively for the seconded staff member

• Cat B can be used to hire a project administrator

(recommended for big consortia)

• Distribution of PF to beneficiaries having acceded the GA

and only if minimum have acceded

• Adequate record keeping to demonstrate the eligibility of

secondments and entitlement to unit costs

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SUMMARY• It is advisable, when preparing the project, to draft a consortium

agreement and to allocate a % of costs for project management and

workshops/conferences.

• It would be useful if the European Commission was to rethink how the

costing of the project is worked out by allowing transfer of money

between unit categories and by creating a category that covers project

management and workshops/conferences which is independent of

secondments completed.

• It would be useful if the EC were to negotiate with the Research

Councils of third country that are economically developed, e.g.

Australia, Japan, China, United States, etc, to make national funding

available for their institutions who want to participate in RISE.

• Preparing project amendments is a time consuming task. It will be

constructive for beneficiaries to transfer secondments among themselves

without requiring a project amendment.

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Thank you for listening