Proposed Funded Agreement (PFA)

Overview

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

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

• Complete
  PFA has been executed and the agreement closed.

• Canceled
  No longer an active agreement and has been closed by OSP as it will not lead to an executed PFA.

• Abandoned
  Done only from the Draft status if the PFA is no longer moving forward or it was created in error.

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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:

• Agreement Information - Principal Investigator
• Virginia Tech Team
• Sponsor/Other Party - his includes information about flow-through and direct and prime sponsor. OSP will fill out this information - if you see any discrepancies, make a comment in this panel
• Compliance:
  • Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI)
  • Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
  • Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)
  • Institutional Review Board (IRB)
  • Office of Export and Secure Research Compliance (OESRC)

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.

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

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).

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.

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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.

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

Agreement Information - Principal Investigator

• Proposal Label
  • The work label copied over from the original proposal used to create this agreement.
• Agreement Title
  • The title given for this specific agreement.
• Project Type
  • A description of the type of work, with the possible options of Research, Instruction, Outreach, Extension.
    • Research: Basic or applied research and development activities; conferences for the development or exchange of research information; development of new educational methods; evaluation of State and Federal Programs
    • Instruction: On-campus or off-campus instruction for credit; scholarships and fellowships; student services; instructional equipment; improvement of instructional programs
    • Outreach: Provide assistance to the citizens of Virginia, provide training and leadership development to local governments, state agencies, small businesses, and volunteer organizations. The expertise of the University is transferred to the needs of society.
    • Extension: Efforts to provide the integrated educational services of the cooperative extension service at the county or city level.
• Type of Research
  • Options: Basic or Applied
• Research & Development (R&D) Discipline
  • Click R&D Disciplines to see a full list
• Destination Areas(s)
  • This attribute is copied from the original proposal and can be edited at the agreement stage. It is used on the proposal/agreement if it is connected to or supportive of the Destination Area chosen. A field selected under this heading does not attribute any effort or related percentage of overhead to a Destination Area. This field helps the university understand which faculty, departments, colleges, centers, and/or institutes are involved in transdisciplinary areas of strength identified by the university.
• Sponsored Initiative(s)
• Performance Location
  • The location where most of the work, including analysis and reporting, will be completed.
    • On-campus: In a VT controlled, owned, or leased space where lease is not charged to the project. This includes space provided by partners such as local governments (but not the sponsor). It does not include work performed at an AREC site.
    • Off-campus: At a location further than 50 miles from the main Blacksburg campus that is NOT a VT controlled or owned property including leased locations when the lease is charged directly to the project. It does not include work performed at an AREC site.
    • Adjacent: At a location within 50 miles of the main Blacksburg campus that is NOT a VT controlled or owned property including leased locations when the lease is charged directly to the project. It includes work performed at an AREC site within 50 miles of the main Blacksburg campus such as Kentland, Horton or Catawba.
• Building
  • The building where the majority of the work is to be performed.
• Have you incurred expenses for this project?
• Does this project require the development of intellectual property (IP) (such as computer software or an improvement to sponsor’s product) as a deliverable?
• Does this project require any background intellectual property (IP) (including Virginia Tech, Sponsor or Third-party background intellectual property)?

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.

• Responsible Org
• Virginia Tech Team table
  • Role: Principal Investigator (PI), Co-Investigator (Co-PI), Team member
  • Name
  • Credit Org
  • % Credit
    • Editing the credit organization or credit percentage on the selected row is done through the pencil icon
  • Affiliation
  • Actions
    • A credit organization can be added to an existing team member through the pencil icon
    • Editing the role name or the affiliation on the selected row is done through the pencil icon
• Add Contributor button
  • The ability to add a Co-PI or Team member to the existing Virginia Tech Team
• Support Staff table

Sponsor / Other Party

• Flow-Through (Yes or No)
• Direct Sponsor Name
• Address
• Contacts
  • Contract/Administrative Office Primary Contact
  • Other Party PI/Technical Lead Contact
  • Custom Contacts
• Prime Sponsor
  • Only displayed if the Flow-through question is answered "Yes"
  • Multiple Prime Sponsors can be entered and displayed

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).

Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI)

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)

Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

Office of Export and Secure Research Compliance (OESRC)

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:

• BSPL - Participant Support
• BSPL - Establish a Subfund
• Cost Share
• Not in Banner - Cost Share

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.

Proposal Submission Information

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

• Is there a solicitation?
  • A solicitation is an official invitation from a Sponsor to submit a proposal. Also called “Request for Proposal” or “RFP,” “Broad Agency Announcement” or “BAA,” or “Opportunity.”
• Link to Solicitation
  • A link to the website where the Solicitation is located.
• Is this a Limited Submission?
  • A Sponsor requirement that only a certain number of proposals may be submitted from or will be awarded to a single entity. OVPRI manages all limited submissions. For further information visit the Limited Submission Website.
• Are there unique RFP Instructions or Submission Requirements?
  • This item is available on the proposal to use for communicating unique sponsor submission requirements to the team, such as an odd submission time or type of files to be emailed.
• Does the RFP need to be reviewed by Contracts?
• Does the Sponsor allow a cover letter or Letter of Commitment to be submitted?
• Are there unique Sponsor Forms that need to be included in this proposal?
• Unauthorized Submission
  • A proposal submitted to the Sponsor without authorization from OSP. Awards made to such proposals will not be accepted unless approved by the Assistant VP of OSP and all OSP documentation has been received. See OSP Policy 10-01 for details.
• Sponsor Tracking Number
  • The number assigned by the sponsor to a submitted proposal.