Work Package 1: The Project Management Unit
ORCHESTRA’s “ground control“
ORCHESTRA’s mission is to bring together European and international partners in order to create larger cohort research for collaborating on a clearer picture of COVID-19 to find evidence based medical recommendations. 37 partners from 15 countries join work forces to achieve this goal. Only a well organised research infrastructure with common standards can facilitate serious research of this size. International teams of specialists from different professional backgrounds are assigned to eleven work packages – each entrusted with important tasks (which inspired the project’s name ORCHESTRA). Obviously, this endeavour requires a great amount of coordination, which is in the hands of Work Package 1 (WP1), the project management unit.
WP1 is ORCHESTRA’s “ground control” and provides continuous support to the partners in all aspects of project management, supervises adherence to the Grant Agreement, Consortium Agreement and Publication Policy, facilitates the flow of information between the ORCHESTRA partners and the many stakeholders. Currently, WP1 is also working on the internal financial reporting. This is a valuable practice for helping partners monitor their expenditure and it will facilitate partners when it comes to the official financial reporting activity to the European Commission due this summer. The next important task will be the official project reporting to the European Commission, requiring all the partners to report financial expenses and scientific activities performed in the first 18 months of the project. The team of WP1 describes their work challenge: “Coordinating such a big Consortium is a continuous challenge given the changes and adjustments needed to keep the project updated with the constantly evolving epidemiological situation. These changes indeed have impacted not only the scientific research but also the administrative and financial management of the project.”
The lead of this work package has a team from the University of Verona.