How to submit an effective proposal in the new CDE submission service
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Find out what makes a good proposal for research funding to the Centre for Defence Enterprise. This also covers how to use the new online submission service.
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How to submit an effective proposal in the new CDE submission service
- 2. Guidance on submitting CDE research proposals
- 3. Aims
- 4. Competition Summary Innovation details Finance and delivery schedule Review and submit Submission to competition: steps 1 > 5 CDE submission service
- 5. Competition Summary Innovation details Finance and delivery schedule Review and submit Step 1
- 6. Competition Summary Innovation details Finance and delivery schedule Review and submit Step 2
- 7. Competition Summary Innovation details Finance and delivery schedule Review and submit Step 3
- 8. The idea The benefit The impact The approach The deliverables Five factors
- 9. The idea
- 10. The benefit
- 11. The impact
- 12. The approach
- 13. The deliverables
- 14. The deliverables
- 15. Step 3
- 16. Step 3 A. The Idea B. Defence and security relevance C. Your work plan and research approach D. Exploitation beyond the proof-of concept stage
- 17. Step 3
- 18. Step 3
- 19. Step 3
- 20. Step 3
- 21. Competition Summary Innovation details Finance and delivery schedule Review and submit Step 4
- 22. Competition Summary Innovation details Finance and delivery schedule Review and submit Step 5
- 25. Watermarking
- 26. CDE assessment
- 27. CDE assessment A. Operational relevance B. Likelihood of exploitation C. Builds critical S&T capability to meet UK needs D. Scientific quality / innovation E. Pushing the limits (S&T risk) A. Impact on defence and security B. Likelihood of exploitation C. Advancing important science and technology D. Innovation and scientific quality E. Technical challenge
- 28. Impact on defence and security
- 31. Innovation and scientific quality
- 33. And finally…..
- 36. Questions? Centre for Defence Enterprise cde@dstl.gov.uk www.gov.uk/dstl/cde
- 37. Questions
Notas del editor
- Holding slide. [NEXT]
- Hello – my name is Bruce Hardie and I’m the Technology Manager for the Centre for Defence Enterprise.. As Technology Manager its part of my role within CDE to provide advice. I provide this advice to YOU in order to help you to deliver a quality proposal and therefore increase the likelihood it will be selected for funding and I provide advice internally in order to ensure quality assurance throughout the process of assessment for your proposals. Many of you will know that we have recently moved away from the old CDE Portal and have successfully launched a NEW CDE Submission Service to replace it. For those of you who submitted proposals via the old portal I am sure that you will remember the trials and tribulations of working with it!! I think its fair to say that unlike the new submission service it did not provide the levels of user friendliness/intuitiveness that most of us have come to expect from modern websites. Indeed, it was necessary for me to provide a one hour brief at events such as these in order to explain what content was required and where in the proposal form this should be located. [NEXT SLIDE]
- You will be relieved to hear that I will not be talking for an hour on what to include in your proposals as the new submission service provides significantly more detail on what content is required and where to put it. Consequently, the main aim of this brief is to introduce the new submission service to you and to assure you that although the screen layouts may have changed, our requirements regarding content and our assessment methodology remain the same with only a few additions! [NEXT SLIDE]
- In the new CDE Submission Service there are FIVE steps in the process of submitting a proposal. Im going to give you an overview of them now and point out any differences or additions between old and new ways of working. [NEXT SLIDE]
- The first step is basically to tell us which of our competitions you’re entering. All you need to do here is to here is select from the available entries. The titles of available themed competitions will be displayed for you to select along with their specific challenges. Also available will be our always-open enduring competition and the NINE Challenge areas where you think your proposal addresses. When you’ve done this you will need to click to show you accept the terms and conditions of our competitions Once you’ve made your selections you can SAVE AND CONTINUE. [NEXT SLIDE]
- In the Summary step you need to give your proposal a title and to briefly summarise what its about and what you intend to do. This is similar to what in the old portal was called the “Opportunity Details” What is NEW here is that we also ask you to let us know what technology area your proposal covers. To make it easy for you we have provided drop down boxes for you to select the technology area most relevant to your proposal. This information along with the brief summary you provide will help us to make sure we get the right assessors to look at your proposal. The final thing on this screen is where we ask if your proposal is a re-submission of a previous competition bid. If it is we ask that you let us know what the previous reference number was. When you’ve done these things you can SAVE AND CONTINUE. [NEXT SLIDE]
- The INNOVATION DETAILS step is where you need to put the meat of your proposal. In the briefings I used to give to support the old portal I talked a lot about the FIVE KEY FACTORS of: [NEXT SLIDE]
- The Idea The Benefit The Impact The Approach And the Deliverables Well, our requirement for these factors remains unchanged. These are the key ingredients – if you like – which still go towards making a great proposal. [NEXT SLIDE]
- So… We’re STILL interested in those ideas which have LOW Technology Readiness Levels (TRL)s– usually between TRL 2 and 4. and those ideas which are innovative and lack commercial maturity. CDE’s stated goal remains the same – that of “funding proof-of-concept research into novel, high-risk, high-potential-benefit innovations.” We still want to know about all the science behind your idea so don’t forget to include the underpinning scientific principles. After all, our assessors are mainly scientists and engineers and they love a good technical read! We still want you to tell us about these things like who in Defence will use your innovation and in what scenarios you think it will be used. Would it be combat operations or training exercises? Would it be suitable ONLY for hot and humid places or cold and dry places – OR even both. We get lots of proposals which focus on lowering the SWaP-C of existing equipment and that’s great…. IF this is where you are aiming your proposal then you need to be clear about how and why your idea is different from existing or rival technologies that we might have heard about. But it doesn’t have to be on SWaP-C reductions – we often get proposals on things like improving survivability or improving the working conditions of our service personnel throughout their working lives and this is equally great. Don’t forget though, whatever your idea is about – your proposal mustn’t include any classified information – this is very important! [NEXT SLIDE]
- We still want to hear about the benefits to Defence you think your idea can produce - and of course how big you think these are going to be. I know many of you struggle to understand how the military operates but honestly it’s very similar to most large businesses. Defence tries to 1 - Reduce its operating costs and timescales from lower cost materials or skills savings; 2 - Attain an advantage over adversaries from using better quality equipment or training of our workforce; 3 - Attend to the health and safety of its employees. If you find yourself stuck and cannot see an application or what the benefits might be for you innovation then talk to our Military Advisors at our events or book a 1-2-1 session to discuss your idea in greater detail with defence experts. When you do identify what you believe are benefits to Defence - try hard here to provide some form of numerical estimate of the size of the benefit and say why you think it will be so much what your assumptions are. Big claims are great – but evidence that they are credible is also important. [NEXT SLIDE]
- We still want to know whether your idea is going to really push the boundaries of Science & Technology We’re really hoping that your idea is going to be hugely disruptive and offer a game changing advantage to our armed forces! Our assessors will consider all the PRO’s and CON’s surrounding your idea. They will consider all the advantages and the limitations. If you believe there are some limitations associated with your innovation, then be open and state what they are and how their impact could be minimised. Our assessors are not daft and will quickly identify them. If you don’t say what they are and how they might be overcome, then our assessors might think you are unaware of them and this might impact on your chances of being funded…. [NEXT SLIDE]
- Still very important is that you tell us how you plan to take to carry out your research because our assessors believe that a robust and quality approach will strengthen the credibility of your result and a poor approach will weaken them. Your proposal should provide a clear and well articulated description of each of the main activities you plan to carry out. Their progression should be logical and the outputs should be consolidated into the final proof of concept deliverable. Timescales and resource requirements should be included as should dependencies and potential risks and thei mitigations Gantt chart and Work-Breakdown Structures are valuable inclusions to any proposal as they help assessors to quickly grasp the proposed approach at high level. Collaborations with other organisations are seen as a positive thing so don’t worry that your proposal will look bad because you need help form others. Don’t focus exclusively on the delivery of the research you outline in your proposal. Of course this will be your main focus but do remember to include YOUR vision of how the innovative technology might be ultimately exploited through other follow on downstream research and development activities….. Finally please remember to watch out for ethics. If you think your proposal involves humans or animals - even simple things like questionnaires (for humans that is!) you should check-out our website for something called MODREC approval before making a submission. [NEXT SLIDE]
- We still want to see a well articulated description of deliverables so they can be sure about what you are offering. And We still want to know about the tests you're going to carry out to assess the performance of your deliverables. We want to be confident that your deliverables can be judged to have some of the improved performance you claim as benefits within your proposals. Experience has shown the most effective way for you to do this is for you to define some credible measures of performance or MoPs which your trials or experiments will provide the data for. Collecting reliable data from trials and experiments and presenting these as measures of performance is a very powerful approach, and one which is well received by assessors as it provides the evidence they are looking for within your proposal. [NEXT SLIDE]
- So… still lots to include!! …..But as always the challenge remains to develop a comprehensive but clear and concise proposal. Comprehensive - because our assessors need to see sufficient evidence in your proposal of these KEY FACTORS in order to recommend it for funding – and if it is funded that we have the information necessary to form a contract. Clear and Concise - because our assessors still only have the one hour available to assess and comment on the content of a proposal We know it’s a challenge so to help weve made the job of telling the story of your innovation much simpler… [NEXT SLIDE]
- ….…AND - as you can hopefully see from this slide we just have one SCREEN in STEP 3 for you to add all your technical information into – [MOUSE CLICK] and weve divided this STEP up FOUR sections… [NEXT SLIDE]
- In the first section you have an opportunity to discuss your idea and what it involves In the second section you should discuss why you think your idea is important to defence and security In the third section we want to know about how you plan to go about delivering the work for which you are seeking funding And the final section you are invited to discuss your ideas for how you see your idea being developed after completing the proposed work. Nobody knows better than I - that many suppliers found the old portal difficult to use and struggled with what content to include. Well – I am happy to be able to tell you that the NEW service makes up for a lot of these shortfalls. [NEXT SLIDE]
- What you can see on this screen is the expanded view of the first section – THE IDEA. The first thing that the more eagle–eyed members of the audience will have hopefully noticed is the blue text [MOUSE CLICK] which says “What do I need to include?” Clicking on this question will open what is referred to as an accordion [NEXT SLIDE]
- When this accordion opens [MOUSE CLICK] it provides lots of detail regarding the type of things we are expecting to find evidence of within this section. As you can see here, where further explanation of certain points may be needed … - such as here with TRLs - hyperlinks are provided to the specific content in question. This feature of “What do I need to include?” is repeated for each of the FOUR SECTIONS in this STEP 3 – as our aim is to provide all the guidance necessary at its point of use. [NEXT SLIDE]
- In addition to the on-screen help - the submission service has some of those features [MOUSE CLICK] which nowadays we expect from word processing software. Such as [MOUSE CLICK] … the ability to enter rich text and include underlining, emboldening, italics – and the use of bulleted and numbered lists. A spell checker isnt currently included - but this will be added soon. We know that often proposals come about as the result of collaborations and that many people use MS Word as a means of building their content as its easy to attach to emails. If this is how you work you will probably be interested to know that it is now possible to cut [MOUSE CLICK] …..and paste your text directly from MS Word into your proposal form and keep the original formatting. [NEXT SLIDE]
- Because of this new flexible functionality available to help build the text of your narrative… ….and because of a number of recognised issues in the old portal we’ve moved away from using MS Word as the format for attachments. However - we do really appreciate the value of attached photos, diagrams and tables which support your narrative…. [MOUSE CLICK] …and in the new submission service we have ensured that JPEG and PNG can be attached to each section. [MOUSE CLICK] You can either drag and drop your files onto the allocated area or use the more conventional choose file via windows explorer approach. Furthermore unlike the old portal there is no limit to size of attachments either. [NEXT SLIDE]
- The FINANCE and DELIVERY SCHEDULE pretty much replaces the content that was in the COMMERCIAL TAB of the old portal – but the layout is much simpler and easier to complete. We’ve made separate tables for LABOUR costs, CAPITAL costs, OVERHEADS, CONSUMABLES, SUBCONTRACTOR Costs and for TRAVEL EXPENSES that your proposed project might incur. Just as with the old portal you can add a profit margin and just like before my advice is that this should be reasonable and commensurate with the other proposed rates in your cost breakdown. When you’ve entered these costs we ask you to name your DELIVERABLES and put together a schedule for their delivery. As has always been the case MoD doesn’t pay in advance for work to be carried out. BUT if you think waiting till you’ve finished all your work is going to be a problem you can create deliverables such as interim progress reports which highlight work done and results obtained to date and link them to STAGE PAYMENTS which can be made during the project. When you’ve completed these entries you can SAVE AND CONTINUE to the final step of the submission process. [NEXT SLIDE]
- This last step is where you have an opportunity to view how your proposal will look to assessors. We’ve done away with the Publish as DRAFT and Publish as FINAL stages of the OLD portal process - and weve also done away with the use of the PDF document. The new submission service is much more streamlined. When you click on this REVIEW AND SUMBIT step you can be sure that the way you see your proposal is exactly the way it will appear to assessors. As you progress through each step of the previous FOUR steps of the submission service - the software tells you if you have forgotten to tick a box or include something important. If you still have any of these things missing when you reach this final step - the SUBMIT button will be greyed out. You will need to go back and resolve these missing items as you wont be able to submit your proposal until you do. Once you have dealt with them you will be able to see the SUBMIT button – so when you are happy you have added all the required content and you are satisfied with the way it’s laid out on screen – click the SUBMIT button. When you’ve done this you will be greeted by a “THANK YOU” page which tells you that your submission has been received by CDE. [NEXT SLIDE]
- From the “Thank You” page you can return to what is known as the BIDDER DASHBOARD - which is basically your home screen. You will notice here the dashboard is split in DRAFT and COMPLETED proposals. In the example on screen you will see that the completed proposal has a CDE reference number - in this case on screen its CDE100024 [MOUSE CLICK] Unlike the old portal the new CDE submission service only allocates reference numbers to proposals which have been SUBMITTED. Restricting the allocation of CDE numbers to only submitted proposals is another way you can be sure your proposal has been submitted. No CDE reference number – no submission. Furthermore you can see that unlike the DRAFT proposals, the completed one has a STATUS of SUBMITTED – [MOUSE CLICK] and again this is another easy way to check your proposal has gone through to us. [NEXT SLIDE]
- Just to confirm the situation regarding statuses – statuses ONLY apply to completed proposals. DRAFT proposals don’t have any status For COMPLETED proposals there are just FOUR for you to look out for * As I’ve just mentioned SUBMITTED means – we’ve got your proposal * IN ASSESSMENT indicates the proposal is being assessed or a final decision on funding hasn’t been made yet * and FUND or NO FUND will be the status you will see on your dashboard when we’ve made a decision. Simples eh? [NEXT SLIDE]
- Just a quick word on security. Im sure you know CDE takes very seriously its responsibilities as a trusted guardian of your supplier IP. In order to further demonstrate our commitment to that guardianship we have introduced a water-mark feature which displays the users name across the pages of the submission details both on-screen and when printed out. This feature is active for suppliers such as yourselves and internally for our assessors and moderators – so if found we can know from whence it came – and take steps appropriately! [NEXT SLIDE]
- So on to the assessment of proposals and you will be happy to know that it remains the same. Its still evidence based and continues to follow the principles of the Dstl Performance Assessment Framework. We’ve made some teeny weeny changes which are basically tidying up the titles of our assessment categories. And weve done this really as Digital Service Standards for Government Websites require the use of plain English and of course the benefit of this is that it makes it clear what each category is about. [NEXT SLIDE]
- These are the old descriptions [MOUSE CLICK] And these are the new [NEXT SLIDE]
- What you can see here [MOUSE CLICK] are the FIVE assessment criteria (which Im going to talk about in a minute) and the corresponding assessment scores [MOUSE CLICK] which are awarded to each proposal No prizes for guessing [MOUSE CLICK] that quality proposals tend to be assessed as Very Good or even Exceptional!! [NEXT SLIDE]
- In this category we’re looking for clear evidence that your innovation will significantly improve our defence and security capabilities. So - we’ll consider things like what your innovation will do, who would use it and where, and what would be the potential benefit to UK defence and security. [NEXT SLIDE]
- Here were still looking for evidence that your proposed idea can be developed into a mature, usable product So we’ll consider things like your plan for development beyond the proof-of-concept stage, and the usability and likely cost of the final product. [NEXT SLIDE]
- We want to develop important science and technology - and not necessarily just in relation to defence and security but also for UK plc. So in this category we’ll consider things like whether or not your project will substantially progress science and technology inside defence and other market sectors such as Oil & Gar or Telecoms.
- In this category we are looking for evidence that the science proposed is innovative and if it’s going to be done to the highest standard. So we’ll consider things like how innovative your idea is, and the detail you include in your science and work plan. [NEXT SLIDE]
- And finally technical challenge As Im sure you are aware - CDE competitions are designed to make possible exciting and innovative work. The perfect project in our eyes will be one which is highly challenging with a high potential benefit to UK defence and security. In this category we’ll consider things like whether there’s evidence of very ambitious science and technology and rigorous testing. Also we’ll be looking for deliverables that help us to determine whether or not the project has been a success. [NEXT SLIDE]
- So hopefully from this briefing you will take away the message that…… the new submission service is a significant improvement on the old portal ……AND that our requirements regarding evidence based content and our assessment methodology remain the same …Im just going to take this opportunity to leave you with a few DO’s and DON’T’s: DO remember to be clear and concise when filling in your proposal – as much as our assessors love learning about new S&T they have only around 60mins to read and give their opinions so ask yourself how much you can read and assimilate in 60mins – this should be your guide on the length of your proposal DO use diagrams – photos – tables etc to support your narrative – this really helps us to carry out that assimilation quickly and effectively DO find commercial alternatives for things which you need so that your proposals don’t rely on Government Furnished things – we hate to say NO just because we cannot guarantee to be able to give you the resource you need. And finally in the case of Themed Competitions - DONT leave your submissions to the last moment before submitting them – give yourself plenty of time. Dont miss the deadline !!!! [NEXT SLIDE]
- One final thing which you still might like to do is to get somebody who you trust to read and review your proposal before you submit it. People tend to take things for granted and failing to fully explain the concepts involved…. ..even failing to be specific about acronyms, puts our assessors at a disadvantage – which is not something I would advise. Assessors are not encouraged to give the benefit of the doubt so in their eyes - an ambiguous proposal is likely to result in ambiguous outputs. [NEXT SLIDE]
- So that’s it…. The software has changed… and for the better. The new submission service functionality is now much easier to use and the on-line help makes it clearer at point of use exactly what content we require from you. And…. Our assessment of your proposals hasn’t changed So hopefully will agree that the goalposts remain unchanged but now there is a much better chance of scoring that winning goal !! [NEXT SLIDE]
- This concludes my briefing. Thanks very much for listening - I am now happy to take any questions now! [MOUSE CLICK]
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