Questions on Secondments and Interim check meeting
Dear all,
Since I am managing my first ITN project, I have a couple of questions regarding secondments and the Interim check meeting.
1. For the secondment, I know it is important that the student has no costs in addition to what he/she normally has , e.g. no double rent for a room at host country and a room at secondment country. Therefore during secondment we covered the travel and accommodation expenses, but not meals. However our secondments so far were within the same country (the Netherlands). So how about secondments that are hosted in other countries, are we supposed to pay for the meals (due to costs differences)? For example the ESR is recruited in Portugal and will go on secondment in Germany. How have you dealt with this in other ITNs?
2. One of the secondments is hosted by a large company that has multiple locations in different countries. In order to save time, the host suggested to have the secondment virtually to train the ESRs on regulatory affairs (no need to be at location) and maybe a visit to the headquarters to see the R&D lab. Or if the secondment really needs be at the host location, the ESRs could be at one of the company offices in the ESR’s country. However there will be no R&D department. I am not sure whether these suggestions add to the ESRs experiencing different working environments, but I do understand it would save time for research for the ESRs. Do you have any experiences with similar secondments/ situations?
2. As I understood form our EU project officer, the Interim check meeting will be on location and involves an external reviewer. In order to be efficient we are considering to combine the Interim check meeting with the Annual meeting. Do you have any experiences in organizing the Interim check meeting at location? Furthermore I was wondering whether you normally practice the Interim check presentations of the ESRs and work package leaders with the whole consortium?
Any feedback/advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Danique