Proposed Funded Agreement (PFA)

Overview

A Proposed Funded Agreement is a grant, cooperative agreement, or contract created through the proposal process in Summit Proposals.




Initiation

This type of agreement will only be initiated by the Contracts team within OSP when an award is received by their team. If you receive information about an award that OSP may not be aware, send an email and all documents to ospcontracts@vt.edu.




Workflow (Status)

Draft

After creation, a pop-up will display explaining important instructions related to the PFA. The first two bullet points will always display, while the last four are conditional based on proposal information.

Funded Pop-Up

When a new agreement is initiated, Summit Agreements will pre-populate many of the fields by copying over select values, answers, files and comments from Summit Proposals. At this time, the agreement is in Draft status and will not be visible outside of OSP until it transitions to Initial Review.

The OSP Contracts team will review all the information that was copied over from the proposal into the agreement, and verify and correct information to correspond to the award/agreement received.


Initial Review
After the Contracts team has verified the newly created funded agreement with the award received, they will transition the agreement to the Initial Review status.

PFA Static Pane Initial Review

In this status only, the Virginia Tech Team (PI, Co-PI(s), Team Member(s), and support staff) will gain access to the agreement for them to review/correct all information that has changed from the Proposal to Agreement and to complete new fields in the indicated panels. Also at this stage in the agreement life cycle, the PI will be asked to officially verify all data via the "PI Verify Data" button.


In Progress
When all needed data is collected from the PI and/or the Virginia Tech team, OSP Contracts will transition the agreement to In Progress.

The Contracts team will create and assign tasks needed to be carried out to successfully process and negotiate the award. Examples are Contract Negotiation with the Sponsor, Budget update requests or various Compliance reviews, such as the Conflict of Interest or Office of Export and Secure Research Compliance. You will be able to see the full list of tasks related to your agreement just below the agreement panels.


Post Award Review
When all tasks and action items are completed, the Contracts team will transition the agreement to Post Award Review status to send the record to a Post-Award associate for their review.


Award Setup
Once Post-Award completes their review, the agreement moves to the Award Setup status and the grant and funds are set up in Banner, as applicable. Subsequently, a Project Authorization Notice (PAN) is sent to all investigators, fund managers and support staff on listed orgs.


Closed
There are three closed reasons for a Proposed Funded Agreement: Complete, Canceled, and Abandoned.




PI Verification

Proposed Funded Agreements (PFAs) require the Principal Investigator (Virginia Tech Team member or support staff) to verify data and fill in blanks before OSP Contracts can negotiate or process an agreement with the sponsor and before a fund is set up.

Summit will send an email to the Principal Investigator (PI) titled “[Summit Agreements] Action Required from Principal Investigator” detailing next steps for the PI to access the agreement in Summit Agreements and to review certain sections.

There are four panels to be reviewed and verified, incl. completing new fields:

Review your answers to the COI, IACUC, IBC, IRB and OESRC questions from the proposal development stage and update them as needed. If you already have an approved protocol for IACUC or IRB, upload the document to Summit Agreements in the appropriate panel.

Changes to certain fields may prompt a revision to the proposal or require additional approvals. Provide an explanation in the comments field in each section if any changes are made.

The Principal Investigator may be required to upload the Required Notice for Federal Awards and/or NASA Faculty Agreement, if applicable. Download the documents from the links provided in the email and then sign and upload them in Summit Agreements in the Agreement Information - Principal Investigator panel.


Verification Labels

Initially there will be a label indicating the PI Verification is pending on the left of the Actions band. The button to verify is on the right side of the Actions band named "PI Verify Data", seen in the screenshot below.

PI Verification Static Pane

Once the agreement is verified, the label changes to "PI Verified".

PI Verified Static Pane


Verifying

Anyone with access to the agreement can click the "PI Verify Data" button and then verify the agreement by clicking "Submit" in the modal (shown below).

Verify Modal

This step needs to be done before OSP Contracts can negotiate or process an agreement with the sponsor and before a fund is set up.


Verification Reminder E-mails

Two Reminder emails will be sent if the agreement is not verified in a timely manner. The first reminder will be sent 7 calendar days after the PFA goes into the Initial Review status. Then the second reminder will be sent another 7 days after the first reminder (14 days after the PFA goes into the Initial Review status).

Once the PFA has been verified, an email will be sent out confirming verification.




Panels

In Proposed Funded Agreements (PFAs), there are several panels of information. All but one panel have the ability to be edited by the Virginia Tech team members and their departmental support staff when in the Draft status (for NDAs) and Initial Review status (for all types of agreements).

Some panels have multiple sections within that panel, called panes. Each pane will show information related to that pane, as well as its own File and Comment section.

All panels are shown below.

PFA All Panels

In the Initial Review status, the top 4 panels will be in blue to indicate which panels for the PI and Agreement Team need to concentrate on for review and completeion.

The below text explains the panes and fields associated with each panel.


Agreement Information

PFA Agreement Info Panel

Agreement Information - Principal Investigator

PFA Agreement Info PI Panel


Agreement Information - OSP

This pane is for the use of the Office of Sponsored Programs.


Virginia Tech Team

This panel has the same structure as the Non-Funded Agreement types, except the added aspect of credit percentages that initially come from the proposal that the agreement was created from.

Virginia Tech Team Panel


Sponsor / Other Party

PFA Sponsor Panel


Compliance

All questions and answers from the five panes in the Compliance panel are copied over from the original proposal. The Principal Investigator is not answering any new questions and only needs to verify that the answers from the proposal still match the reality of the agreement. Summit will also copy over comments and files attached in the Compliance section in the proposal into the agreement.

Depending on the individual answers, more text may be provided, most notably with a "Yes" (e.g. IACUC).

PFA Compliance Panel


Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI)

FCOI Pane


Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)

IACUC Pane


Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)

IBC Pane


Institutional Review Board (IRB)

IRB Pane


Office of Export and Secure Research Compliance (OESRC)

OESRC Pane


Budget

Summit will copy some of the fields from the proposal and OSP will fill out the General Budget Information pane as they work through the agreement and finalize the necessary details.

OSP will create as many budgets as applicable. Each agreement will have one budget type called "BREG - Establish New Award". There are four more budget types that may be created on a proposed funded agreement:

The Budget panel will usually get populated later in the process.


Subcontractors
This panel displays to the Virginia Tech team only if there are subcontractors on the awarded project. Subcontractors that were on the proposal will automatically be copied to the agreement.

If a subcontractor needs to be added, there is an "Add Subcontractor" button. If a subcontractor needs to be removed, there is a trash can icon next to all subcontractors. The deleted subcontractors will appear at the bottom of the panel in the "Deleted" tab.


Related Proposals and Agreements

When a PFA is created, a proposal ID is initially needed to complete the creation process and that proposal ID is shown in this panel.

Additional proposals and/or agreements can be linked to the particular agreement that is being viewed. Only items with a Summit ID can be added by using the "Link" button at the bottom of the panel. Linked items can be removed by clicking the trash icon.


PFA Related Proposals and Agreements Panel


Proposal Submission Information

All information dislayed in this panel is copied over from the original proposal and is read-only.