D1.6 Final Report

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 884411. Application of Solar Thermal Energy to Processes D1.6 Final Report Document Summary Information Grant Agreement No.: 884411 Acronym: ASTEP WP: WP 1 – Project Management and Coordination Task: Task 1.2 – Administrative and Financial Management Task 1.3 -Advisory Board Management Deliverable ID: D1.6 – Final Report Submission date: 2025-07-23 Due date: 2025-06-30 Owner: Antonio Rovira (UNED) Participants: Rubén Barbero (UNED) Dissemination level: Public Reviewers: Juan Enríquez (ADSC), Juan P Solano (UPCT) Approver: Antonio Rovira (UNED) ☒ Report ☐ Demonstrator ☐ Open Research Data Pilot ☐ Other D1.6 Final Report Page 2 of 21 Executive Summary Task T1.2 - ‘Administrative and Financial Management’ of ASTEP project is devoted to the project administration and management, including the resources and financial control, while Task 1.3 - ‘Advisory Board Management’ deals with the administration issues of the External Advisory Board members. This deliverable describes the actions taken for the management of these aspects and compiles all the documents associated to them. The project governance relies on a structured framework comprising several bodies: the Coordinator, the Project Steering Committee, the Management Support Team and the Scientific & Technical Committee. The Coordinator, Antonio Rovira (UNED), assumes day-to-day management responsibilities, ensuring administrative and financial coordination, compliance monitoring, and communication with the Funding Authority and consortium members. The Project Steering Committee, consisting of one delegate from each beneficiary, serves as the ultimate decision-making body overseeing strategic orientation, policy adherence, and project evolution. It has held ten formal meetings. The Management Support Team provides operational support to the Coordinator and the Project Steering Committee. Finally, the Scientific & Technical Committee monitors the technical and scientific progress of the project, focusing on the coordination and timely achievement of project objectives and milestones. It is composed of WP leaders and contributors from the technical work packages. Regular meetings of the Scientific and Technical Committee, up to 26 across the project lifecycle, have been held to facilitate technical progress reviews. The External Advisory Board consists of external experts providing independent advice and contributing their expertise during Scientific & Technical Committee meetings, although without decision-making rights. Members contribute to knowledge transfer, enhancing project value and visibility. Periodic reporting mechanisms are established to monitor project progress. Technical progress reports are presented during Project Steering Committee and Scientific & Technical Committee meetings, detailing WP achievements, milestones, and deviations. Financial interim reports, compiled every six months, monitor incurred costs and budgetary status. Document management and internal communications are facilitated through a Microsoft Teams environment named ASTEP Team, structured into General, WP-specific, Partner-specific, and External Advisory Board channels. These channels provide collaborative tools for document sharing, communication, financial reporting, and meeting organization. D1.6 Final Report Page 3 of 21 Revision history (quality control) Version Issue Date % Complete* Changes Contributor(s) V1.0 2025-07-09 100 % Initial Deliverable Structure A Rovira (UNED) R Barbero (UNED) *According to ASTEP Quality Assurance Process: - 3 months before Deliverable’s Due Date: 50% version should be submitted for QA review. - 1 month before Deliverable’s Due Date: 100% version should be submitted for QA and peer review. - Submission month: All required changes have been applied, (including the QA and peer reviews) and it is ready for submission. Disclaimer The content of the publication herein is the sole responsibility of the publishers and it does not necessarily represent the views expressed by the European Commission or its services. Any dissemination of results and any communication activity related to the action, reflects only the author's view and it does not necessarily represent the views expressed by the European Commission or its services. While the information contained in the documents is believed to be accurate, the authors(s) or any other participant in the ASTEP consortium make no warranty of any kind with regard to this material including, but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Neither the ASTEP Consortium nor any of its members, their officers, employees or agents shall be responsible or liable in negligence or otherwise howsoever in respect of any inaccuracy or omission herein. Without derogating from the generality of the foregoing neither the ASTEP Consortium nor any of its members, their officers, employees or agents shall be liable for any direct or indirect or consequential loss or damage caused by or arising from any information advice or inaccuracy or omission herein. Copyright message © ASTEP Consortium, 2020-2025. All rights reserved. Licensed to the Innovation and Networks. D1.6 Final Report Page 4 of 21 Table of contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................................... 2 Table of contents .............................................................................................................. 4 List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... 5 List of Figures .................................................................................................................... 6 Glossary of terms and abbreviations ................................................................................. 7 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 8 1.1. Mapping ASTEP Outputs .................................................................................................................. 8 1.2. Deliverable Overview and Structure ................................................................................................ 9 2. Bodies of the consortium and meetings .................................................................... 10 2.1. Coordinator .................................................................................................................................... 10 2.2. Project Steering Committee ........................................................................................................... 11 2.3. Scientific & Technical Committee .................................................................................................. 12 2.4. Management Support Team .......................................................................................................... 14 2.5. External Advisory Board ................................................................................................................. 15 3. Periodical reports ..................................................................................................... 16 3.1. Technical progress reports ............................................................................................................. 16 3.2. Financial interim reports ................................................................................................................ 17 4. Document management and communication ............................................................ 18 4.1. General channel ............................................................................................................................. 18 4.2. WP channels ................................................................................................................................... 19 4.3. Partners and Advisory Board channels .......................................................................................... 19 5. Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 20 References ...................................................................................................................... 21 D1.6 Final Report Page 5 of 21 List of Tables Table 1. Adherence to ASTEP’s GA Deliverable & Tasks Descriptions. ............................................... 8 Table 2. Coordination team. ............................................................................................................. 11 Table 3. Members of the PSC. ........................................................................................................... 12 Table 4. Meetings of the PSC. ........................................................................................................... 12 Table 5. Main STC members ............................................................................................................. 13 Table 6. Meetings of the STC. ........................................................................................................... 13 Table 7. Members of the MST. .......................................................................................................... 14 Table 8. Members of the EAB. .......................................................................................................... 15 D1.6 Final Report Page 6 of 21 List of Figures Fig. 1. Structure of the Consortium and Frequency of meetings of the different bodies. ............ 10 Fig. 2. Template for the STC/PSC presentations ............................................................................ 16 Fig. 3. Template for the technical progress report ........................................................................ 17 Fig. 4. Template for the financial progress report ......................................................................... 17 Fig. 5. Interface for the ASTEP team within Microsoft TEAMs. ..................................................... 18 Fig. 6. Interface for the deliverable submission process ............................................................... 19 D1.6 Final Report Page 7 of 21 Glossary of terms and abbreviations Acronyms ASTEP Application of Solar Thermal Energy to Processes CA Consortium Agreement EAB External Advisory Board GA Grant Agreement IC Innovation Committee IPR Intellectual Property Rights MST Management Support Team PSC Project Steering Committee STC Scientific & Technical Committee WP Work package D1.6 Final Report Page 8 of 21 1. Introduction Task T1.2 - ‘Administrative and Financial Management’ of ASTEP project is devoted to the project administration and management, including the resources and financial control, while Task 1.3 - ‘Advisory Board Management’ deals with the administration issues of the External Advisory Board members. This deliverable describes the actions taken for the management of these aspects and compiles all the documents associated to them. The actions taken for deploying these activities can be arranged in three categories. - Meetings: Most of the information from the administration of the consortiums comes from the meetings of the different bodies of the consortium, particularly the Project Steering Committee and the Scientific & Technical Committee, with active participation of the Coordinator, the Management Support Team and the External Advisory board. This information is recorded in the form of minutes and videorecording of the meeting sessions. - Reports: The financial and technical progress control has been monitored every six months by means of financial and technical reports generated by WP leaders and/or beneficiary leaders. - IT tools: The implementation of the actions has been carried out with the help of the software MS Teams. All the meetings, documents and reports have been deployed with the use of the different tools included in ASTEP team. 1.1. Mapping ASTEP Outputs The purpose of this section is to map ASTEP’s Grant Agreement (GA)[1] commitments, both within the formal Deliverable and Task description, against the project’s respective outputs and work performed. Table 1 relates the information included in the Deliverable to the information required for the Deliverable and Tasks. Table 1. Adherence to ASTEP’s GA Deliverable & Tasks Descriptions. TASKS Task 1.2 – ‘Administrative and Financial Management’ Section 2, Section 3 and Section 4 This task covers the operation and maintenance of the project administrative and management infrastructure. It also includes the financial control and management of resources and the coordination of internal affairs as well as maintaining the EC’s relationship with the project. Through establishment of the Project Secretariat, this task will assure overall project administration and communication, project reporting, preparation of management reports and internal project reviews, administration of project meetings at all levels, keeping project accounts, etc. Section 2 reports on the individual roles and consortium bodies with relevant responsibility in the subject. These roles & responsibilities are described, and the list of meetings and the access to the minutes, recordings and documents (secured access) are shown. Section 3 and Section 4 describes, respectively, the different documents, templates and tools used for the efficient implementation of the task. Task 1.3 – ‘Advisory Board Management’ Section 2.5, Section 4 The Advisory Board will be formed by external experts that will advise strategically the consortium. The composition of the Advisory Board will be heterogeneous, including expertise from different sectors, not specifically related to technological research objectives. In this task all the aspects related to the management of the Advisory Board will be handled, that is: Section 2.5 describes the External Advisory Board and shows the member that have been part of it. Section 4 presents the collaborative platform that have been internally used by the project members, with a specific space for the External Advisory Board. D1.6 Final Report Page 9 of 21 coordination; meeting organization; distribution of documents and exchange of information. The task is aiming to gather relevant knowledge to implement the technological improvement of ASTEP prototypes and to generate key ideas for future exploitation and development of business plans. Each Advisory Board meeting will generate minutes and a set of recommendations. DELIVERABLE D1.6 – ‘Final Report’ Section 2, Section 3 and Section 4 The management reports will include information required in corresponding guidelines of the Horizon 2020 programme and every aspect related to the Advisory Board meetings. Section 2 describes governance structure of the project and the responsibility of each of them regarding this subject. Section 2.5 is particularly devoted to the External Advisory Board. Section 3 and Section 4 describes, respectively, the different documents, templates and tools used for the implementation of the task. 1.2. Deliverable Overview and Structure Section ¡Error! No se encuentra el origen de la referencia. presents the different bodies of the consortium and the meetings held. The different types of meetings are described, together with the responsible, roles, members and the list with the minutes and recordings. Section 3 describes the reports for the technical and financial control. The list of the different reports are presented. Section 4 describes the ASTEP Team and the embedded tools that have been used. The list of participant with access to the tool is also shown. Section 5 shows the conclusions of the deliverable. D1.6 Final Report Page 16 of 21 3. Periodical reports As it was described in [2], work package progress monitoring is accomplished through a combination of deliverable monitoring, STC meetings and PSC meetings. In order to facilitate the monitoring, the leader of each WP and/or beneficiary produce a document to be presented at the STC and PSC meetings, containing the following information: - Summary of the progress made in each Work Package area including a description of R&D activities, testing, etc; - The key achievements of the overall Work Package in the phase; - Deliverables, Tasks and Milestones achieved or completed; - Summary of Industrial Involvement and Training Activities; - Any shortcomings or lessons learnt in the phase. These documents are archived in the respective folders of the meetings, together with the minutes and recordings. The template of the presentation (Fig. 2) can be found in the Templates folder of ASTEP Team. Fig. 2. Template for the STC/PSC presentations Additionally, in order to facilitate the monitoring and to support the Coordinator, every six months beneficiaries are advised to compile the information on the technical and financial progress of that period, who archives the files. This is compulsory at the end of each official reporting period. The documents are described in the sections below. 3.1. Technical progress reports The template for the periodical technical progress report can be found in the Templates folder of ASTEP Team. To aid its elaboration, the WP or beneficiary leaders shall report the activities of the corresponding WP in each STC meeting as described previously. The template is shown in Fig. 3. The information given by the WP leaders include: • an explanation of the work carried out by the beneficiaries; • an overview of the progress towards the objectives of the action, including milestones and deliverables identified in Annex I of the GA; • the explanations justifying the differences between work expected to be carried out in accordance with Annex I and what was carried out. D1.6 Final Report Page 17 of 21 3.2. Financial interim reports Similarly to the technical progress, in order to monitor and prepare the financial information and the content to be presented in the reporting periods, the financial responsible of each partner report the financial status (incomes and incurred costs) within the corresponding period. The template is shown in Fig. 4. Fig. 3. Template for the technical progress report Fig. 4. Template for the financial progress report D1.6 Final Report Page 18 of 21 4. Document management and communication At the beginning of the project, the coordinator prepared a collaborative workspace in Microsoft TEAMs. The link to the ASTEP Team was distributed to the partners and participants. The accounts for the participants of beneficiaries and members of the external advisory board were created and updated. The team and its content are only accessible with an email account and a password. The ASTEP team platform allows the use of tools like cloud storage to share documents, chat, videoconference, task management, posts, etc. It also includes an email address: [email protected]. All emails sent to this address will be distributed to all members of the group. The main features and structure of the ASTEP Team are described below. Fig. 5. Interface for the ASTEP team within Microsoft TEAMs. 4.1. General channel Main events of the project and overall information can be accessed via this channel. It includes a cloud storage repository with the different templates and information & requesting forms. The General Channel also hosts: • the lists of the deliverables submitted by the user, and the reviews and reports generated by the user in the reviewing processes in which she/he is involved, • the main video-conference meetings, • the corresponding post associated to the meetings and • the registration forms. The submission process of the deliverables to the coordinator to initiate the review process was done using the corresponding tool within the team. Fig. 4 shows the interface for the submission of the deliverables. D1.6 Final Report Page 19 of 21 Fig. 6. Interface for the deliverable submission process 4.2. WP channels There is a dedicated channel for each WP to be used for communication among members. These channels include the tools like posts (communication) and cloud storage that allocate a collaborative space for deliverables documentation and meetings. In particular, in the WP9 channel there is a folder to upload every DCE contribution of the project. 4.3. Partners and Advisory Board channels Each partner and the EAB members have an associated channel to be used for internal communication and communication with the Coordinator. These channels include the following tools: • Posts (communication), • Cloud storage, • Finances (an excel file that the financial responsible can use online or download, not for the EAB channel). D1.6 Final Report Page 20 of 21 5. Conclusions The governance model of the project has structured the organizational framework necessary for effective project management. The establishment of designated bodies -Coordinator, PSC, MST and STC, together with the EABhas provided roles and responsibilities, accountability, transparency, and facilitated the decision-making throughout the project duration. The Coordinator, with support from the MST, has managed administrative, financial, and communication aspects, and has tried a smooth communication between the consortium and the Funding Authority. The PSC has played a pivotal role in strategic guidance, resource allocation, conflict resolution, and high-level project oversight, demonstrated through consistent biannual meetings and active participation of delegates from all beneficiaries. The STC has ensured correct scientific and technical monitoring, with bimonthly meetings facilitating real-time tracking of research progress, milestone achievement, and risk mitigation across work packages. The EAB’s inclusion, despite its advisory-only role, has provided valuable external perspectives and knowledge transfer during technical discussions, strengthening the project’s scientific and industrial relevance. Periodic reporting through structured technical and financial updates has enabled systematic progress tracking, accountability, and informed decision-making. The implementation of the Microsoft Teams-based ASTEP Team platform has further enhanced collaborative work, documentation processes, and improved internal communication and information exchange across the consortium. D1.6 Final Report Page 21 of 21 References [1] “Grant Agreement number: 884411 — Application of Solar Thermal Energy to Processes (ASTEP),” 2020. [2] A. Rovira, G. Avgousti, P. Philippou, S. Christofi, and R. Barbero, “D1.1 – Project management and quality handbook,” Dec. 2021, Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.5771993.