SPO Proposal Review and Timely Submission

Institutional Review 

An Institutional Review is SPO’s most comprehensive review of your proposal prior to submission to a sponsor. Institutional Review ensures that your proposal is aligned with sponsor and UC policies, while helping reduce errors that could impact award negotiation and acceptance.

Note that retroactive proposals where the proposal is being routed through KR after it was submitted to the sponsor without going through SPO, and non-competitive proposals where the sponsor does not require a formal competitive proposal process through a RFP, NOFO, or similar, will always require an Institutional Review.

Your proposal officer will review the following:

• Confirm that the appropriate Facilities & Administrative (F&A)/Indirect Cost (IDC) rate and base are applied to the proposal budget.
• Verify that there is appropriate documentation of any committed/in-kind University or third-party cost sharing.
• Confirm that the sponsor, prime sponsor (as applicable), anticipated activity type and anticipated agreement type are correct in KR. 
• Review institutional eligibility requirements and ensure all identifying proposal information provided about UC San Diego, the Sponsored Projects Offices, and/or The Regents is required, accurate, and/or correct. 
• Review all items that trigger a compliance review such as human subjects, animal subjects, conflict of interest, export control, background IP, exceptional PI status, etc.  Ensure the compliance questionnaire in the key personnel section of KR is answered accordingly and applicable compliances are added to the compliance section of KR. This compliance questionnaire should be completed by the PI. 
• Check to ensure that effort is budgeted for all Single and/or Multiple PD/PIs (for NIH, this also applies to Co-I, Sr/Key Persons). Also for NIH Other Significant Contributors or UCSD consultants who do not have a measurable effort on the application, it should be listed at 0% in PD (for COI purposes). The proposal package and the KR record must match.
  • For fixed-price clinical research projects, by submitting the KR record with a per-patient budget instead of a detailed/itemized budget, the department confirms that all required effort and salary costs are included in the budget. The per-patient budget must include the direct cost, indirect cost, total cost, and the IDC rate used.
• Ensure specific University costs are applied as required. 
  • For fixed-price clinical trial research projects, by submitting the KR record with a per-patient budget instead of a detailed/itemized budget, the department confirms that all required University costs are included in the budget.  The per-patient budget must include the direct cost, indirect cost, total cost, and IDC rate used.
• Review budgeted costs to ensure they are aligned with sponsor policies. 
• Review the proposal package to see if it is specified that new space is needed to complete the project and if so, ensure the KR record question is answered accordingly.
• Ensure all required internal documents and applicable proposal materials required by the sponsor have been included in the KR record 
• Determine if anything in the sponsor’s guidelines or award terms would prevent submission of the proposal or acceptance of an award if the proposal is funded. 
• Review and provide for signature of certifications, assurances, and representations.
• Provide additional guidance or edits to the KR record and proposal documents as needed.
• Communicate issues and concerns identified during the Institutional Review.
• Liaise with the appropriate award team for any terms and conditions, redlines, or negotiation of ancillary documents required at the proposal stage.

Cursory Review

Proposals that only receive a Cursory Review should be an exception and come with risks, including:

• Proposals are submitted without an Institutional Review.
• Proposals risk being rejected because of errors and warnings in the proposal packet.
• It is common for rushed submissions to be rejected by the sponsor.
• Increased risk of award delays and the campus’ inability to accept the award.

All proposals must be released to the AOR in the sponsor portal no less than two business days prior to the sponsor’s deadline.

Under a Cursory Review, SPO  will only review the following critical data elements:

• Confirm that the appropriate Facilities & Administrative (F&A)/Indirect Cost (IDC) rate and base are applied to the proposal budget.
• Verify that there is appropriate documentation of any committed/in-kind University or third-party cost sharing.
• Confirm the sponsor, prime sponsor (as applicable), the anticipated activity type, anticipated agreement type are correct.
• Verify that there is appropriate documentation for PI Exceptions, subrecipients. 
• Communicate errors or warnings that would require the application to be withdrawn, corrected, and re-submitted.

Proposals that are submitted As-Is are submitted without review.  SPO cannot guarantee that the proposal will be submitted as there may be limited capacity to do so or technical or compliance issues that prevent a submission. The closer that a proposal is routed to the sponsor’s deadline, the less likely that SPO will be able to submit your proposal.

All proposals must be released to the AOR in the sponsor portal when the KR record is routed to SPO.

Your proposal was routed to SPO without ample time for the SPO to conduct an institutional review of your proposal. Accordingly:

• This proposal may contain errors that prevent it from being submitted to the sponsor promptly or may result in it being returned by the sponsor.

• Without review, a proposal carries a higher risk of not capturing appropriate scope of work, equipment, budget needs, and other elements. 

• Poor proposal quality can result in delays in award negotiation because of needed corrections and revisions. This may result in a longer time to review, negotiate and accept the award as well as the inability to accept the award.

• In order to accept an award, you will assume responsibility for any errors, including covering costs that were incorrect in the proposal submission.

• The KR record must be corrected and finalized within three days of submission of the proposal to the sponsor.

• SPO’s successful submission of your proposal does not set the precedent that future last minute proposals will be accepted or submitted successfully.

• Increased risk of award delays and the campus’ inability to accept the award.

• As-is proposals are prioritized for submission after proposals that route timely with the same due date have been submitted.

• Institutional Proposal Review Checklist
• KR PD Data Elements Checklist
• Fellowship vs Grant Matrix
• Clinical Research Proposal Guidance

*Fellowship NIH Individual NRSA RPPRs are NOT entered into PD, though reviewed and submitted by the Health Sciences Proposal Team (formerly HS SPPO).