Sharing experience from working on European projects Groupe

Sharing experience from working on European projects

Dedicated to members, who want to share their experience from working on European projects. From episodes and stories to general reflections on our work.

Just posted a new article on WIKIs, and how they can be used in the course of project management - including examples and tips for working with WIKIs. Hope you like it

www.discuss-community.eu/working-on-lifelong-learn…

Chargement du contenu, veuillez patienter.

I am just preparing the financial report for a project carried out under the lifelong learning program. According to the rules changed for 2013 projects the report has to be certified by an external auditor. I wonder if anyone has experience with this new requirement and would share it with us.

Carme ROYO Hi Randolph, We have already two projects (and are partners in a few other) that force the contractor to get an external auditor to visit you and go through ALL the documents (financial things, not content/outputs) to confirm that you have taken care of the financial administration of the project correctly. Note that this does visit from an external auditor selected by you does not exempt you from being fully audited afterwards by the EC. Actually, the fact that your external auditor says you have done everything well and all is in order, does not mean that the EC auditor (if you are selected to receive one) will not disagree and even penalise you for something nobody had seen before. So... I would recommend you to contact a good auditor who is already done this task of auditing EU-funded projects and observe his/her good advice for collecting any missing (or insufficient) documentation. We have a Belgium auditor, if you need it. In April will be the first time we do this with a... Afficher plus Il y a 9 ans

Hi Randolph, We have already two projects (and are partners in a few other) that force the contractor to get an external auditor to visit you and go through ALL the documents (financial things, not content/outputs) to confirm that you have taken care of the financial administration of the project correctly. Note that this does visit from an external auditor selected by you does not exempt you from being fully audited afterwards by the EC. Actually, the fact that your external auditor says you have done everything well and all is in order, does not mean that the EC auditor (if you are selected to receive one) will not disagree and even penalise you for something nobody had seen before. So... I would recommend you to contact a good auditor who is already done this task of auditing EU-funded projects and observe his/her good advice for collecting any missing (or insufficient) documentation. We have a Belgium auditor, if you need it. In April will be the first time we do this with a project, so, I cannot give you details on how it will go.

Randolph H Carmen, thanks for sharing this important information. The biggest challenge to me is the tight timeline going along with this new regulation. So far we had 2 months time for preparing the financial report. But, the new rule now is forcing us to do the same job in less than 1 month, since the time for external auditing has to be deducted from the total time given. Cheers, Randolph. Il y a 9 ans

Natassa, this is an interesting aspect, indeed.

On-line meetings can support the communication, but I think that physical meetings boost the cultural understanding and online meetings keep the momentum.

Randolph et M. Begoña Arenas

I think that the one thing that can make the difference with language and cultural misunderstanding is practice! Organisations and people that enter the world of European projects need time and practice to learn to work with people from different countries. Many times, even experienced people need time to adjust in a new partnership. Therefore, it is important to schedule frequent meetings with enough time to discuss things and create common understanding. On-line meetings can be used for I think that each physical meeting boosts social bonds

And, by the way: Welcome Cristina! Good to have such an experienced person like you onboard

Yes, all of that is important. My experience over the past 20 years is, that for whatever reasons many projects are not able to render all or even some of these points into concrete action in such a way, that they help to increase the capacity for mutual learning within and beyond the project's lifetime.

Language and Cultural Understanding

I think one of the main things to take into consideration is language and cultural understanding. Often in times people say one thing, but usually they mean something else... sometimes ideas get lost into translation and this can lead to frustration.My experience has often been positive, but I think that this is also due to the fact that I am - most times - able to navigate language and cultural understandings of romance and Germanic languages. hence, I think it's important to establish close links with partners during and between meetings. Here are some ideas that might help: - Negotiating the meeting agenda with the partners - use ice breakers at each face to face meeting for people to bond (the social aspect is important) - agree on the language of communication and don't fall into the 'trap' to default to a language that you have in common with just some of the partners or your team (that frustrates the rest of the group) - organise monthly or bi-monthly online meetings (google...

Sharing experience from working on European projects