How do I manage the proposal writing?

Coordinator: Writing a full proposal - you are the editor

You need 150 to 400 hours to do the writing
You need one principal writer or editor - plus a writing team (2-3 persons)
You must organize input from the partners
- Input to objectives
- Input to SoA from their specific fields
- Input on available data and methods to be used
- Get each partner to write their own WPs and tasks including resources needed (PM)
Find external readers that can give you feedback on draft text (different people see different things so you need more than one)
- Idea development and overall understanding
- Logic, structure; objectives-SoA-WPs-results-partners-impact
- Science, references, data and methods
- The text itself (This is the most time consuming)

Writing the proposal

Use the writing team; spread the work load. In particular get help on the non-time critical parts
Get an overview of how much text you need to produce for each section, it is surprisingly little, in most cases a page or two max. (How to eat an elephant)
If you ask for text from partners be clear on the page limits and max length needed for each piece of input
Get help on the budgeting
Get help on EC formalities and online systems

Practicalities

Keep a strict control on doc versions save old versions and go to a new version frequently
Do backups, the easiest backup is sending the document to yourself or a colleague by mail
Use a simple formatting, do the final formatting late in the process, wait with page shifts
Use Word features for headings and references
If you copy from other docs do not import their styles and formatting if you can avoid it
Keep all budget data in a single spreadsheet where all data is linked and the source is put in once

Coordinator: Non-time critical issues

Things you can do independently of the time critical writing (do it asap - don’t wait):

Gather all background information needed; references, articles, legalisation and directives, standards
Deal with ethical issues, and write necessary text, get approvals
Gather budget information i.e. salaries and personal costs of partners, gather info for consumables costs, clinical trials costs (unit costs), cost of lab facilities and other costs needed
Set up advisory board, organize supporting letters
Get CVs, partner presentations, publication lists, project references; write chapter 4 and 5 of the proposal
Fix all formalities in your own organization; approvals, signatures, resource issues regarding extra personnel
Patent searches and freedom to operate issues