The desk that reads the call before you write a line

EU grants

Funding & Tenders Portal · Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, LIFE, CEF, Erasmus+, EIC, ERC

What is scored

• Horizon Europe (RIA / IA): three criteria — Excellence, Impact, Quality and efficiency of the implementation — each scored 0–5 in half points with a threshold of 3. For Innovation Actions, Impact is weighted 1.5 for ranking only.
• Part B has a fixed template (v5.1, January 2026), identical for every topic: 1 Excellence (1.1 Objectives and ambition ≈4 pages, 1.2 Methodology ≈14) · 2 Impact (2.1 Pathways ≈3, 2.2 Dissemination, exploitation and communication ≈3) · 3 Implementation (3.1 Work plan and resources ≈12 with tables 3.1a–3.1h, 3.2 Capacity ≈3).
• Page limit 40 (45 for lump-sum calls, 25 for CSA, 10 for a first stage) including the title, the participant list and every table, figure and reference.
• Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnerships: Relevance 25 · Design and implementation 30 · Partnership 20 · Impact 25 — at least 70 of 100 and half of each. Digital Europe: Relevance, Implementation, Impact, 0–5 each, threshold 3 and 10 of 15. EIC Accelerator: one company, three steps, 20 pages. ERC: a single criterion — Excellence.

Before you apply

• An EU Login per person and a provisional PIC from the Participant Register — about an hour. PIC validation is not required to submit; it blocks the signature, not the deadline.
• Minimum consortium for RIA/IA: three independent legal entities from three different countries, at least one from a member state; affiliated entities do not count. Subcontracting has its own rules — read: are subcontractor costs eligible under Horizon Europe?
• Financial capacity check for the coordinator when the requested grant is €500,000 or more: the last two closed years, the most recent closed within 18 months.
• Format is prescribed: A4, margins ≥ 15 mm, minimum 11 pt, PDF only, fonts embedded, no password.

Submission

• 17:00:00 Brussels time, to the second. Only the coordinator submits, only through the forms generated by the system. Every resubmission replaces the previous one; a saved but unsubmitted change does not exist for the evaluator.

What silently fails

• Excess pages are not rejected — they are made invisible after the deadline, and the applicant gets no message.

  “After the deadline, excess pages will be automatically made invisible, and will not be taken into consideration by the experts.”EU Grants: Application form (HE RIA, IA), version 5.1, 22 January 2026

• A missing dissemination and exploitation plan: the proposal is not evaluated at all — an admissibility condition, not a score.
• Organisation data edited in the form instead of the register is not saved. A template downloaded from the topic page instead of the system is not accepted.
• A consortium that falls below three entities from three countries after a partner drops out.

EU public procurement

Directive 2014/24/EU on national platforms · EU institutions via eSubmission (Financial Regulation) · the Directive applies above the EU thresholds; below them national law alone governs

What is scored

• There is no standard template. The bid's structure comes from three places in the buyer's documents: the award criteria table (the technical offer is written item by item, in that order), the selection criteria table (one block of evidence per criterion), and the annex list (numbered forms used verbatim and signed).
• A real Commission scheme, as the shape the desk fills: quality 60 / price 40, sub-criteria 75 + 15 + 10, and bids under 35 % on quality are rejected before the price is opened.
• Always present: the exclusion and selection declaration, proof of the signatory's authority, the joint-bid agreement, the subcontractor list with roles and percentages, commitment letters, the technical offer, the financial offer on the prescribed form, CVs per required profile.

Before you apply

• Two regimes that are often confused: EU institutions buying for themselves use the Financial Regulation, a Declaration on Honour and eSubmission on the Funding & Tenders Portal; national buyers use the Directive, the ESPD and their national platform.
• There is no single account. A bidder active in three countries needs three or more platform accounts (Germany is fragmented by buyer; Poland uses e-Zamówienia; France PLACE and buyer profiles) — and must subscribe to each procedure, because corrigenda and answers are published only there.
• The ESPD is a promise, not proof. Every entity you rely on submits its own ESPD; evidence is requested from the winner. Certificates are usually no older than three months, and criminal-record extracts are needed per director and representative — the only item in the file that multiplies with headcount.

Submission

• The deadline is in the buyer's local time, not Brussels — a measured example reads “15:59 Greek time”. For procedures published after 1 June 2021 the system blocks submission after the deadline; the receipt is the proof.
• Questions asked fewer than six working days before the deadline need not be answered. Bid validity is often six months. Signature rules differ by country: Poland requires a qualified electronic signature at and above EU thresholds; France requires none unless the documents say so.

What silently fails

• The wrong time zone. The wrong signature strength. A signed PDF rendering of the ESPD where the XML was required, or the reverse.
• The financial offer in your own layout instead of the annex; VAT included where it was asked without.
• Large files uploaded late — encryption runs on your machine and the clock stops when it finishes, not when it starts.

UK grants

Innovate UK Funding Service · UKRI Funding Service

What is scored

• Innovate UK: a fixed shape of scored questions, each marked 1 to 10, each with a word limit the competition sets (400 words in the 2026 competitions, 600 in Growth Catalyst): Need or challenge · Approach and innovation · Team and resources · Market awareness · Outcomes and route to market · Wider impacts · Project management (a Gantt chart is mandatory) · Risks (a risk register is mandatory) · Added value · Costs and value for money.
• Unscored gating questions come first: applicant location, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export licence, trusted research.
• Attachments: PDF only, ≤ 10 MB, ≤ 2 A4 pages, legible at 100 %. Innovate UK has no font rule; UKRI Funding Service prescribes Arial 11 pt, single spacing, 2 cm margins. The two must not be mixed.

Before you apply

• Innovate UK has no pre-recognition: the account is opened and the application starts the same day; the lead applicant submits, at 11:00 UK time.
• UKRI Funding Service is the opposite: organisation eligibility takes at least 12 weeks, the research office submits — the project lead may not submit their own application — usually at 16:00.
• The finance form is filled by every partner, per named person: gross salary, employer's NI, pension, working days per year, days on the project. Overheads: none, a flat 20 % on labour, or calculated. Capital by depreciation. Subcontracts outside the UK need a justification. Patent costs: SMEs only, £7,500 per partner. Read: which costs a company can claim on an Innovate UK project.
• Funding rates: micro and small up to 70 % (feasibility and industrial research) and 45 % (experimental development); medium 60 % and 35 %; large 50 % and 25 %; research organisations up to 100 %, academics 80 % of full economic cost, and research organisations together at most 30 % of project costs.
• Subsidy control: Minimal Financial Assistance of £315,000 per company over three fiscal years, declared on the Innovate UK form together with all de minimis and public funding in the current and two previous years.

What silently fails

• A partner who does not accept the invitation within 48 hours; a partner who does not complete their finances — the lead cannot submit, and that is explicitly not accepted as an excuse.
• The lead applicant and the account e-mail cannot be changed; a wrong choice means starting again.
• An unpaid expenditure or accountant's report from an earlier grant blocks new funding until it arrives.
• After the offer the clock is hard: 5 days for the project lead, finance contact and bank details; 30 days for the exploitation plan and the signed collaboration agreement; 90 days to complete the set-up or the offer may be withdrawn.

UK public procurement

Procurement Act 2023, in force since 24 February 2025 · Find a Tender, Central Digital Platform, the buyer's own portal · does not apply to Scottish contracting authorities

What is scored

• The Procurement Specific Questionnaire (v2.0, February 2025) covers connected persons, every subcontractor at every level (for the debarment list), insurance (employer's liability of at least £5 m is the only universal figure), data-protection compliance, up to three contracts from the last three years with a named contact and e-mail, health and safety in 500 words, and a modern-slavery statement for turnover of £36 m or more. Each item is information only, pass/fail or scored; in a real pack: 0–5 with a threshold of 2 in every mandatory section.
• Method statements are written against the award criteria at the second stage: strict word limits, supporting data in question order, cross-referenced as Section X.X Question Y, an uneditable PDF plus the source Excel for prices, pounds only.
• Social value carries a minimum weighting of 10 %. A new model was published on 5 August 2026 for procedures started from 1 January 2027: threshold £1 m including VAT, 10 % up to £5 m and 20 % above, two outcomes and six scored items. Assessment is qualitative — a large number without a delivery plan scores nothing.

Before you apply

• Two accounts per bid: the Central Digital Platform for supplier data (GOV.UK One Login → PPON → share code) and the buyer's portal for the documents and the submission. Accounts from before 2025 must be re-registered.
• The share code is a snapshot, not a live link. After any change to directors, accounts or VAT status a new code must be generated — otherwise the buyer sees stale data and nobody is told.
• Certificates that expire every year and are checked on the day: Cyber Essentials (renewed every 12 months, valid when the data is submitted), the Carbon Reduction Plan for central-government contracts above £5 m a year (signed by a director, published on the company's landing page), and, increasingly, an AI usage statement — in one real pack, leaving it blank meant automatic disqualification.

What you get back — unique to the UK

• By law, every evaluated bidder receives an assessment summary: its own score per criterion with reasons that quote the bid, and the winning bid's scores — before the award notice, with an eight-working-day standstill. The desk will import it, so the next bid starts from where the last one lost points.

What silently fails

• A stale share code. A connected person or subcontractor not registered on the platform. Cyber Essentials expired on submission day.
• The MFA limit of £315,000 exceeded. A social-value answer written as a figure rather than a plan.

US federal grants

grants.gov · NIH eRA Commons · NSF Research.gov · SBIR / STTR · 2 CFR 200 governs federal awards to non-federal entities; for-profit firms are not covered in the same way

What is scored

• NIH: reviewers score 1 to 9, where 1 is the best; the overall impact score is the average × 10 (10–90). Page limits are per activity code: Specific Aims 1 page; Research Strategy 6 pages for R03, R21, R41, R43, R50 and others, 12 pages for R01, R15, R44, U01 and others; Project Summary 30 lines; Project Narrative 3 sentences; Commercialization Plan 12 pages for R42/R44.
• NSF (PAPPG 24-1): two criteria only — Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts — rated Excellent to Poor, no numeric total. Project Summary 1 page with three mandatory parts; Project Description 15 pages with a separate “Broader Impacts” heading and no URLs; Data Management Plan 2 pages; Budget Justification 5 pages plus 5 per subaward.
• SBIR / STTR: Phase I up to 6 months (SBIR) or a year (STTR), statutory $150,000 with a cap of $323,090 without a waiver; Phase II up to two years, $1,000,000 with a cap of $2,153,927 (April 2026 figures). At least two thirds of Phase I work must be done by the small business itself.

Before you apply — the registration chain decides everything

• Strictly in order: Login.gov → entity validation → UEI (12 characters) → full SAM.gov registration (“at least ten working days”; NIH says three weeks or more) → grants.gov account with the AOR role approved by the EBiz POC → eRA Commons for NIH (two weeks or more), Research.gov for NSF, the SBA Company Registry for SBIR.

  “Registration can take six weeks or more.”NIH, Organization registration, grants.nih.gov/new-to-nih/organization-registration (checked 8 September 2026)

• Our guide on tender response times measures how short the window between notice and deadline is on US solicitations — far shorter than the registration chain. Registration can never be done after the call is found; the desk keeps it as a standing item on your company's file, with its expiry.
• Per person, not per company: an eRA Commons ID (the PI cannot create their own), a linked ORCID, a biosketch on the Common Form via SciENcv and a Current & Pending Support form — each certification valid 12 months. NIH salary cap $228,000 from 1 January 2026 (NIH notice NOT-OD-26-038).
• Indirect costs are a decision, not a line: a negotiated rate (NICRA) if you have one, otherwise the de minimis of up to 15 % of modified total direct costs, with no documentation required. Read: 2 CFR 200 — what it covers and who it binds.
• Forms: SF-424 (applicant type, UEI, congressional district, seven funding amounts, E.O. 12372 review, federal-debt delinquency), SF-424A budget by object class (6a–6k), SF-424B with 19 assurances signed by the authorised representative.

Submission

• Only a user with the Standard AOR role submits. NIH deadline: 17:00 local time of the applicant's address on the SF-424. Statuses: Validated → Received by Agency; the failure is “Rejected with Errors”.
• There is no correction window at NIH — only a two-day viewing window for assembly problems. Since 17 December 2025 a placeholder attachment makes the application incomplete and it is withdrawn, even if the system check passes; the only way to fix a submitted application is a new, changed one before the deadline.
• Attachment rules are exact: PDF only, file name ≤ 50 characters and unique, ≤ 100 MB, margins ≥ 0.5 inch, font ≥ 11 pt, no headers or footers (NIH adds its own), flattened PDF, links only where allowed and with the URL visible. A “VIRUSDETECT” error is usually a bad file name, not a virus.

What silently fails

• The AOR role not granted — the request waits until an EBiz POC who may never have logged in approves it. grants.gov accounts lapse after 365 days of inactivity and lose their roles.
• SAM registration expired (it renews every 365 days; start 45–60 days before). A key person without an eRA Commons ID, discovered two days before the deadline. A biosketch certification older than 12 months.

US federal contracts

SAM.gov · FAR Parts 9, 12, 13, 15, 19, 31 · DFARS for defence · many FAR rules apply only above or below a dollar threshold set in the solicitation

What is scored

• The structure comes from the solicitation, read in this order: Section M names the evaluation factors and their relative importance; Section L prescribes the volumes, page limits, format and how to submit; Section C gives the technical content. The FAR itself sets no page limit — only Section L does, and the same goes for fonts, margins and file formats.
• Typical volumes: administrative (signed offer form, acknowledgement of every amendment, Section K, UEI, CAGE, NAICS and size, set-aside status), technical (approach, key personnel with commitment letters, transition, quality control, risk register), management (organisation, subcontracting, security clearances, SPRS and CMMC for defence), past performance (CPARS, usually three years — a new entrant is rated neutral, neither favourably nor unfavourably), price.

Before you apply

• Registered in SAM at the time of offer — no exceptions worth relying on. DUNS no longer exists; the UEI replaced it on 4 April 2022.
• Size is computed, not declared: average annual receipts over the last five fiscal years, average employees over 24 months, affiliates added; the NAICS code and size standard are set by the contracting officer in the solicitation, and every option or extension is a new representation.
• Set-aside certifications from the SBA: 8(a) (90 days to process, nine years at most, annual eligibility), HUBZone (principal office in a zone, at least 35 % of employees living in one, recertified every three years), WOSB/EDWOSB (90 days, three years), SDVOSB through VetCert — self-certification ended on 22 December 2024. Read: what a set-aside is and who qualifies · when simplified acquisition applies · which costs are unallowable.
• Defence: a NIST SP 800-171 score in SPRS no older than three years and a CMMC status at the level the solicitation names — the contracting officer may not award without it.
• Section K representations may point to SAM only if the SAM entries were updated within the last 12 months; any deviation is stated in the offer itself and applies to that solicitation alone.

Submission

• Whatever the solicitation names — a portal, e-mail or physical delivery; there is no single federal portal. If no time is stated: 16:30 local time of the named office. An offer received after the exact time is late and not considered.
• The electronic safe harbour is one day, not a grace period: a late offer is forgiven only if it reached the government entry point by 17:00 one working day before the deadline.
• Every amendment must be acknowledged in the way and by the time the amendment says. An unacknowledged material amendment is a standard ground for rejection — especially one issued in the last 48 hours.

What silently fails

• SAM expired on offer day. Representations older than 12 months. An unacknowledged amendment. A NAICS code or size computed from stale receipts.
• An e-mailed offer bounced for attachment size and re-sent after the deadline — the safe harbour does not cover it. A defence bid without a current SPRS score or CMMC status.