Action F1. Project coordination.
Partner: Direcció general de Biodiversitat.
Aims:
The aim of this action was none other than to coordinate and centralize all information related to the project in order to ensure agile exchange of information among all partners as well as to quickly communicate any matters brought up by the members to the European Commission

Function and structure:
Organized in three bodies:

-Project Director
-Project Coordinator
-Technical and administrative support team.

Functions of each:

-Project Director:

• Presides and Chairs the Board of Directors and the Control Committee.
• Is legally responsible vis a vis Brussels

-Project Coordinator

• Has knowledge of all the actions that are to be developed in the project.
• Supervises the progress of said actions.
• Programmes and organizes talks and meetings with other partner, aided by the technical and administrative support team.
• Integrates and synthesises results obtained by the partners so that these may be used in future actions of the project.
• Executes the decisions of the Control Committee.
• Supervises the work of the technical and administrative support team.
• Designs and executes a contingency plan should the project need re-focusing.

- Technical and administrative support team.

• Organizes and attends meetings and seminars on the project, prepares the minutes and provides logistic support.
• Designs and maintains an internal web page that helps to control the budget and the technical aspects of the project. This web page is for exclusive use of the project partners.
• Maintains and up-dates (in collaboration with project partners) : archive procedures and processing, registration of financial data on the project, and control of personnel, in order to guarantee compliance of all administrative stipulations affecting the project.
• Organizes and maintains the general archive of the project.
• Prepares financial and activity reports.
• Writes up and publishes the minutes of the Seminars which take place during the time of the project.
• Coordinates and obtains consensus on the development and publication of the educational material about the project.
• Organizes the visits of European Commission civil servants and lends support during the time they spend here to carry out the required auditing tasks.

-New Control Committee

Members:

• Project Director
• Project Coordinator
• A representative of the administrative and technical support group
• A representative of each of the beneficiaries.

The functions of this Committee are:

• To meet every fifteen days to indicate the present developmental stage of the project. These meetings will be held fortnightly until the project has reached the desired degree of development, after which time the meetings will be held once every three months.
• Decide on project milestones and explain how those goals will be reached.
• Make progress reports.
• Re-evaluate the actions when difficulties in the implementation of the same turn up.
• Meet at least once every three months. During 2004 meetings are to be held on the twentieth of each of the following months: January, April, July, December.
• Meet once a year, for a two-day period, to present project results so that the general public will be made aware of the results that the project has achieved.

Conclusions:
Because at the beginning certain difficulties turned up, the activity of the coordinating group was an invaluable help towards ensuring the agile and successful development of the project which was, in fact, achieved. It was observed that holding monthly –or in some cases, bi-monthly meetings—was a vital element to ensure that the aims of the project were fulfilled as these regular meetings helped to create team spirit among the partners to the point where a real feeling of participation developed and produced a stronger commitment on the part of all parties involved. Notwithstanding, it was sometimes necessary to hold bi-lateral meeting with some project participants in order to iron out administrative or implementation difficulties. At present Committee meeting are held as needed since the project has almost been finished.
The main aim of this action, to coordinate all partners and achieve agile communication among them in order to execute all the previewed tasks, has not been easy. In spite of the great effort required, the satisfaction of all parties involved has amply compensated.