Work Package 1: Project Management

This WP concerns the integral management of the project, enabling and stimulating efficient exchange of information and collaboration. Specific objectives are to ensure proper implementation of the Work Plan and achievement of the BrightnESS objectives as well as providing an efficient day-to-day management of the project. This includes monitoring and ensuring on-time delivery of scientific and financial reports, establishing effective communication with the Commission, and ensuring proper interaction between collaborating partners.

Task 1.1 Scientific project management

Compiling progress reports, monitoring progress and strategy. Scientific research project management is done at national level by the partners, which is then aggregated and completed by ESS.

Task 1.2 Financial and administrative project management

Monitoring of financial expenditure in line with the Work Plan. Gathering and checking of financial and administrative reports from the partners; compiling overall reports for submission to the EC. In addition, a budget of 6,000€ for the certificate on the financial statement (CFS) has been allocated to each partner required to provide it according to their final budget.

Task 1.3 Coordination of legal issues and project risk management

Identification of legal issues (Consortium Agreement and external issues) and taking appropriate mitigation steps to ensure the project’s objectives are met and delivered within budget and on time.

Task 1.4 Organisation of meetings and Internal Communication

Organisation of project meetings, including the Plenary Kick Off and regular Progress Meetings of the Project Coordination Team (PCT) and the Steering Board (StB), See Section 3.2.1 Management structure and procedure for more information. Coordination of the internal communication activities between partners and providing a common archive and online workspace for documents. (i.e. organisation of agendas, minutes and action lists, knowledge management and gender issues.

Task 1.5 Socio-economic impact methodology and criteria for ESS

The success of the ESS will be defined by the scientific and socio-economic impact it has for academic and industrial researchers. The academic impact will be monitored by tracking indicators like the no. of requests for beam-time, the quality of the proposals, the results of research through publications, patents, the increase of the scientific user base across countries and follow-up research requests. However, the ESS member states also expect ESS to show clear socioeconomic impacts, both during the design & installation phase as well as during operations. These are expressed – for example - in terms of participations by industry in construction of the facility and/or the development of scientific instruments, improved regional science capacity, new business creation, new employment etc. This task will develop the methodology needed by ESS to be able to systematically identify and track appropriate indicators for socio-economic impact and to also allow ESS to integrate socio-economic impact criteria into the decision-making process when selecting suppliers and scientific teams. The methodology must be applicable both during the construction and operations phase of ESS.

The activities included in this task are:

• a benchmark of world-leading RIs (relevant to ESS);

• definition of impact measures for socio-economic impact;

• methodology for identifying, collecting and analyzing impact measure data;

• development of a process for including societal impact criteria in the selection of projects and/or procurements;

• validation of the methodology and the societal impact criteria following a prototype data collection trial.

ESS nor its project partners have sufficient knowledge or capacity to undertake this type of business analysis task. For this reason, the task will be (largely) subcontracted to a European business