Resource management

Central organization

The vice-rector for research has overall responsibility for externally funded projects at VID (grant and commission projects, often called BOA projects). The teamleader of the central project support team is located in the Division for Research Administration in the Department for Research. Project advisers from the Section for Internationalization in the Department for Education form part of the team, in addition to project controllers from the central finance section. The project support team is responsible for ensuring that VID has routines and systems that facilitate appropriate budgeting and implementation of externally funded projects.

Distribution of responsibilities at the faculties

The dean and vide dean for research have overall responsibility for externally funded projects at the individual faculty. The overall responsibility involves both strategic and financial assessments. The day-to-day responsibility has been assigned to the vice dean. The deputy dean must thus inform about and mobilize relevant calls for proposals, as well as coordinate approval and quality assurance related to application work. The vice-dean for research must also assist, in collaboration with project advisors, with follow-up of the project upon approval.

The individual manager is responsible for ensuring that employees enrolled in externally funded projects have the opportunity to purchase and/or reallocate teaching time and/or use their own R&D time in accordance with current principles (see below).

Work with applications for externally funded projects must be approved by the vice dean for research at the individual faculty, as early as possible in the process. This avoids spending time on an application that is later stopped or should have been stopped. The vice dean for research is responsible for involving relevant leaders in connection with the approval. The project support team will need written confirmation from the vice-dean for research that approval is available.

The following must be considered in the approval:

• Is the topic anchored in the unit in question?
• Is there a requirement for self-financing and, if so, what consequences will the self-financing have for the unit in question?
• Do the employees entered in the application have time in their work schedules to work on the project if granted? (See below for applicable principles related to time use in projects)

The project advisers can, when relevant, assist the management with assessments of other points related to the application ( e.g. whether the applicant(s) have the right profile; what kind of support will be needed in connection with the application and implementation, etc.).

The budget must be approved by the leaders. All budgets must first be approved by the project manager's immediate supervisor and vice dean for research (plus the head of department at a faculty that has a head of department). If the project's total budget is over 500,000, the budget must also be approved by the dean. When submitting the project budget, the project advisor must provide relevant information such as requirements for self-financing, what type of self-financing has been entered, etc.

The following applies to all externally financed projects, and must be used as a basis for approving the budget at all levels:

• As a general rule, own financing must only be entered if there is a requirement.
• In the case of a requirement for self-financing, this should not, as a general rule, be higher than the requirement set out in the call text.
• The immediate manager and the employee have a joint responsibility for ensuring that no more free buy-out and/or self-financing is entered than is available within the employee's work plan.

In connection with exemption from pedagogical time in research projects (extra R&D time), existing principles for BOA projects, adopted in the Rector's management meeting on 17.11.2020, apply These can be summarized as follows:

• The 50/50 principle must be followed. This means that half of what is applied for comes in addition to the existing standardized R&D time. Example: An associate professor applies for a 50% position from NFR. This is divided in two and added to the standard 30% for an associate professor. The employee thus gets 55% R&D time, of which 50% is linked to the NFR project.
• Management of a research project is considered R&D time and is thus included in the above model.
• Own funding, which is time and not overhead (TDI), must as a general rule be taken from standard R&D time.

• Externally funded activity that falls under educational time is made visible as educational time in the employee's work schedule and does not provide grounds for increased R&D time. In the calculation of educational time, as a general rule, VID's framework and norms for study effort and educational resource distribution must be used as a basis.

• Externally funded activity that falls under educational time should, as a general rule, be fully funded to ensure financial sustainability.

• In externally funded education projects that also have an R&D component, the 50-50 principle is followed for this part of the project (for example follow-up research or other).

Leaders at level 3 sign contracts and agreements of less than 500,000. Leaders at level 2 (or rector, if required by the granting authority) sign contracts and agreements of more than 500,000.