For a project to be deemed successful, it must be delivered on time, within the budget, and to the highest possible standard – and achieving this requires great project management skills. That said, overseeing any project is never easy and managing a Horizon Europe project comes with its own set of unique challenges.
The good news is, by following the seven tips we’ve outlined below, you can stay organized, minimize the time required to undertake administrative tasks, and ensure financial success.
Read on to find out how.
1. Know the project inside out
First and foremost, if you want your Horizon Europe project to be successful, you need to develop the project carefully and know it inside out. For the most part, this means you need to analyze every detail according to the call text. At this stage, you should also become very familiar with:
- The teams and individuals that will need to be involved
- The key roles and responsibilities
- Deadlines
- Objectives and goals
- The tools you need to make all this happen
By getting to grips with the project in this way, you can better manage expectations, deadlines, communications, and more.
2. Be sure to build a strong consortium
Your Horizon Europe project will require a strong consortium made up of experts in their fields. These are the people that will oversee your project and keep it on the right path. By choosing those with a proven track record (rather than simply working with close connections), you won’t need to spend as much time explaining roles, responsibilities, and project management. This makes it much easier to get straight on with the job at hand.
3. Make effortless collaboration and communication a priority
Communication is absolutely the key to success when it comes to projects, and nowhere is this truer than a Horizon Europe project. Efficient communication structures are required for building trust, keeping tasks on track, reporting and monitoring progress, and meeting deadlines.
As members of the project consortium might be new to one another, building and maintaining trust, as well as regularly touching base, is going to be vital. The best way to do this is to find a singular cloud-based project management tool where those involved can communicate easily and in real-time when required.
For example, tools that facilitate collaboration using instant video calls and online group meetings, as well as central hubs for saving and sharing documents. This makes working together seamless and effortless, no matter the location or time of day.
4. Set out critical milestones
By identifying and outlining the key milestones of your Horizon Europe project, you are better equipped to stay on target. Not only this, but you can review and perform evaluations after each phase to ensure you’re sticking to the budget and achieving the best results.
And again, with lots of individual parties involved, you need to find a tool that can help you to set out these critical milestones in an easy and accessible way. Luckily, there are lots of useful platforms out there that allow you to co-create robust project schedules with your teams.
5. Be careful to manage potential risks
As well as overseeing and managing your project, you also need to manage the potential risks. This is an imperative project management practice nowadays and is essential for project success.
In particular, when it comes to your European Horizon project, there are serval key aspects you need to be aware of:
- When using collaboration tools, it’s vital to set varying levels of access and authorization. This includes having a secure document repository
- You must ensure all data security follows EU and GDPR standards
- Ensure that all Intellectual Property (IP) agreements meet the needs of all partners and are drawn up as soon as possible
- Think carefully about financial risks and how to mitigate these (more on this in the next section)
This is cubical because risks can creep up on you and jeopardize your whole project, so by managing these and ensuring corrective measures are taken, you increase the likelihood of smooth and successful Horizon Europe Project Management.
6. Make sure you have sufficient measures in place for financial management
The financial management of a Horizon Europe project can be complex, but when you have a budget to stick to, it needs to be a key part of your project management. After all, you don’t want to run out of funding halfway through!
The best way to handle this aspect of your project is to make sure you have sufficient financial expertise in place, as well as the right tools.
Opt for platforms that allow for collaborative financial planning, analytics, and setting out the budgets for each team or phase of the project. This will help you to get a solid financial forecast in place and then stick to it as you undertake the project.
7. Rely on real-time data
And finally, using real-time data is helpful for tracking progress and managing your Horizon Europe project, but this type of management requires strong software solutions.
This is important for creating a single platform where data can be pulled to plan, monitor, report, and collaborate using real-time insights. And these analytical tools also make it possible to give an in-depth analysis that allows you to spot any deviations, budget issues, or delays as quickly as possible.
This way, you can stay one step ahead of the game and get the project back on track when needed.