Communication Flow. The PC and PMT communicate horizontally for handling strategic, technical and contractual issues of the project whereas, respectively the WP Leaders for the day-to-day management and coordination of activities between the project‘s work packages. The vertical flows concern instructions dispatching and reporting activities between the various management levels. The means for communication and internal reporting within the consortium will be: 5 Consortium meetings (kick-off, 3 progress meeting, final meeting). Consortium meetings will be scheduled and organized by the PC. These meetings will consist of the major events for planning, exchanging of information among partners, assessment of the project‘s progress and success (financial and technical) and for taking major decisions about the project‘s execution. They will allow partners to ensure both detailed project planning and assessment of work progress. Following each meeting a short report (meeting review) will be sent by the PC to all partners.
Communication Flow. Ensuring a good communication among project partners and towards outside entities represents an important key of success for the project and a fundamental practice to manage the project at its best. This can only be achieved through the intensive use of electronic communications (e.g. email, web based exchanges). A project website will also be used to enable fast and efficient exchanges of information. The Project Coordinator will set up the communication channels for use by the consortium. This will be implemented, among others by: • 1-2 day kick-off meeting to guarantee in-depth knowledge exchange • Regular physical consortium meeting (at least once in every 6 months) • Monthly written progress reports: will be requested by the Project Coordinator who will compile the reports in a Project Monthly Progress Report for distribution in the consortium • Phone and e-mail interchanges (day to day cooperative working infrastructure) • Additional regular communication means will be decided upon project start; this may include regular phone conference to discuss project advancement and next steps (at least once in every 3 months). The external communication includes (external communication is detailed in the Dissemination and Exploitation section of this document): • the dissemination through publications • project website • Attendance at conferences • Attendance at events, workshops. It is well known that systematic and timely implementation of information flow is central for any Consortium based project. Nevertheless, overflow of information should obviously also be avoided. The OPPORTUNITY Project Coordinator has the duty to communicate on a systematic and frequent basis even if no problems are identified with all WP leaders during the lifecycle of their WP to assure the smooth flow of OPPORTUNITY Project activities. All ordinary messages related to a certain workpackage will be communicated among all partners involved in that workpackage. Nevertheless, any special important issues or problems within the frame of a WP, are going to be forwarded to the WP leader (if the message is not initiated by him/her) and to the Steering Committee members. As it has been described above the number of meetings should be minimised to a certain extent, but the interaction among partners which is brought up during these meetings is considered of crucial importance, thus it has been planned to have, at least, 6 meetings of the Steering Committee along the 36 months of project li...
