The decision-making structure and the role of the Steering Committee
The decision-making structure will consist of the coordinator, the group of scientific task leaders (the so-called steering committee SC), the administrative and legal managers. The members of this structure will be continuously in contact by e-mail, telephone calls, conference calls. Periodic meetings will be organized to discuss and solve various problems. During these meetings, all decisions regarding financial, administrative and scientific strategies will be taken by voting and each member of the committee has a vote which will not be anonymous. The majority vote is the condition for approving a resolution. If there is a situation of even-steven, the coordinator will be the only one in charge of giving an additional vote, thus finally solving the contrast. In the decision-making committee, the coordinator will have the role of supervisioning and guaranteeing interaction among the members. The administrative manager will be in charge of the financial management.
The management of infrastructures will be also discussed during the meetings of the decision-making committee. Each member of the SC will be responsible for the scientific activities and the achievement of the targets within the workpackages coordinated. At the same time, the SC will take decisions and act in order to widespread the developed technologies to the market and contact companies interested in them. In particular, the SC has the key role of supporting the activity of the coordinator in all her scientific and administrative tasks. It will contribute actively to the organization of meetings and the preparation of the reports. During the project meetings the SC will evaluate the progress of the work, the achievement of the milestones and make decisions about changes of strategies depending on the obtained results and the encountered difficulties. This aspect is very important to always ensure an efficient coordination of the project, to finalize the efforts towards state-of-the-art topics and to have a continuous comparison with research in the rest of the world.
The SC has also the role of writing and signing a consortium agreement which will regulate the dissemination of the results, the management of the intellectual property and the patent policy. The first meeting of the decision-making group will be held one month after the official start of the project. Annual coordination meetings will be planned to discuss the results and organize the writing of the technical reports for the Commission. Whenever urgent decisions of general interest have to be taken, additional meetings will be organized. The preparation of an agenda and deliverable reminders after each meeting will reinforce the decision-making character of the meeting, thus avoiding waste in time and resources. In the frame of the single workpackage management, the task leaders will be free to take decisions and daily modify strategies with the aim of achieving the established targets and deliverables.
