Notice

Competition guidance for developing digital roads and improving air quality (development or pilot only, 1 phase): SBRI competition

Published 23 January 2019

1. Dates and deadlines

Competition opens	11 February 2019
Online briefing event	14 February 2019
Final date for registration	Midday 1 May 2019
Submission of the full application (including appendices)	Midday 8 May 2019
Decision to applicants	21 June 2019
Phase 1 contracts awarded	2 August 2019
Feedback provided	5 July 2019

These guidance notes complement the invitation to tender and are designed to help with completing the application form.

Please read the full competition scope before you make your application.

2. Funding

Highways England is investing up to £20 million to develop innovative ideas and solutions. These must change the way UK roads are designed, managed and used and must not have already been demonstrated on the strategic road network in England.

This is a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition. It is for projects where feasibility has been proven and is at development stage (mid to high TRL). £12 million is available to further progress the research and development (R&D) and produce a prototype.

For innovations where feasibility has not yet been proven (low TRL), you should apply for the 2 phase feasibility study, and development or pilot competition.

The competition will cover 6 themes. Themes 1 to 5 are taken from Highways England, Connecting the Country – Planning for the Longer Term, the guiding principles for the Innovation Designated Fund.

The themes in brief are:

1. Design, construction and maintenance
2. Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs)
3. Customer mobility
4. Energy and environment
5. Operations
6. Air quality

The themes are defined in detail in the competition brief.

3. How to apply

Before you apply into an Innovate UK competition, it is important to understand the whole application process. The information below is specific to this competition. In addition, please read Innovate UK’s general guidance for applicants which will give information on the application process. Please note however that the funding rules may differ for SBRI competitions.

You will receive an email acknowledgement of your registration followed by a second email up to 48 hours later. The second email will contain a username and password for our secure upload facility along with a unique application number and form.

Application

Once you have received your unique username and password, you can sign into the secure website to access additional documentation for this competition.

Appendices must conform to the guidance for this specific competition. Appendices which do not follow the guidance will result in ineligible applications that will not be sent for assessment.

Submit your documents: You should submit:

• your application form with your unique application number for this competition
• project appendices as pdf documents, labelled with your application number

Assessment

Once the competition submission deadline is reached, your application is sent for assessment.

Notification

We will notify you of the outcome of your application on the date stated in the timeline.

Feedback

We will give feedback to successful and unsuccessful applicants approximately 4 weeks after you have been notified of the decision. You can access the feedback by signing into the secure website where you uploaded your application documents. No additional feedback can be provided and there will be no further discussion on the application.

4. The application form

This section explains the structure of the application form and offers guidance on what to answer in each question.

The structure is as follows:

• application details
• title and abstract for publication (not mandatory)
• scope (mandatory)
• competition questions (mandatory)
• question 1: Describe your proposed innovation idea
• question 2: Scientific or technical project summary
• question 3: Technical background, current state of the art and intellectual property
• question 4: Project plan and methodology
• question 5: Technical team and expertise
• question 6: Application finances
• project appendices
• declarations

Please make sure that you upload the final version of your application by the deadline. It is your responsibility to ensure that you do not upload a blank or incomplete application form.

You must follow these rules:

• you can only use the application form provided and it must be completed in Microsoft Word. It contains specific information including a unique reference number for your project
• the application form contains specific fields. It is important that you complete each field and submit a fully completed form. Incomplete forms will be rejected
• the application form must not be altered, converted or saved as a different version of Microsoft Word. Altered or corrupt application forms will be ineligible.
• the space provided in each field of the form is fixed. You must restrict your responses in each of the fields to the space provided. The typeface, font size and colour are predetermined and cannot be changed. Illustrations and graphics cannot be included in the application form. Please check your completed application form in print layout as any text that can’t be seen in this view or when the form is printed will not be assessed
• the light grey shaded fields are completed automatically from other information entered on the form, such as the total columns of a table. These cannot be overwritten

Field	Guidance
Competition name	This field will show the full name of the Innovate UK competition to which the form applies. You do not need to enter anything here.
Document ID	This field is completed automatically.
Applicant number	This field is completed automatically and is the reference that you should use on all correspondence (this is the 5 or 6 digit number after the dash).
Application details
Project title	Enter the full title of the project.
Project duration	Enter your project duration. It cannot exceed 12 months.
Total contract costs	Projects can request a total of £1 million.
Proposed start date	Please provide your proposed start date.
What is the best way to describe your innovation?	Please select from the options.
Theme	Please select from the dropdown list.
Company details	Enter the full registered name and other relevant details of your organisation.
Company contact details	Enter the full name, postcode, email address and telephone number of the main point of contact between Innovate UK and the project.

Title and abstract for publication (not scored)

To comply with government practice on openness and transparency of public-funded activities, Innovate UK has to publish information relating to funded projects. Please provide a short description of your proposal in a way that will be understandable to the general public. Do not include any commercially confidential information, for example intellectual property or patent details.

Please describe your project. Funding will not be provided to successful projects without this.

Scope (not scored)

Use this section to describe how your proposal aligns with the scope of the competition. In particular, highlight which aspects of the challenge your proposal is tackling and how it will provide an integrated solution.

If your application covers more than one theme, please state which other themes are applicable for your project.

5. Competition questions

Question 1: Describe your proposed innovation idea

Clearly describe how your project will deliver the outcomes described in the competition scope. If necessary, you may include an appendix, labelled Appendix A, of up to 2 sides of A4, in PDF format. This can only include figures, images, diagrams, a brief technical document or additional information, and must not be used as an extension of your answer.

Question 2: Scientific or technical project summary

Provide a summary of the technical basis of the project. This should include:

• an outline of the background to the project
• what the innovation is
• the main deliverables of the project
• highlights of the research and development which will prove the scientific merit of your project
• what might be achieved if your innovation were to address the competition challenges

Question 3: Technical background, current state of the art and intellectual property

Please provide details of any competitors or market alternatives. What are the benefits of your innovation? Include details of any existing IP and its significance to your freedom to operate.

Question 4: Project plan and methodology

Your plan should identify the main areas of work within the project with milestones and deliverables The plan for Phase 1 should be comprehensive. You should focus on providing evidence that the technology can be made into a viable working product that achieves the proposed benefits. Record keeping and reports are particularly useful.

You must:

• supply a Gantt chart as appendix B in PDF format, up to 2 pages of A4
• detail how any IP issues would be handled

Project management

Tell us about the project management processes you will use to meet your aims. Identify risks and mitigations.

If you are applying from a university, please include details of your plan for commercialisation of the results of your project.

Question 5: Technical team and expertise

A detailed description of the skills and expertise and track record of the team, including the relevant knowledge and skills of each member and the proportion of their time that will be spent on the project. Relevant commercial and management expertise should also be included.

Question 6: Application finances

The costs quoted must reflect actual costs at a ’fair market value’ and should not include profit. Please provide a summary of costs for phase 1. All costs should include VAT. In addition, please provide a justification of the costs. If there is significant use of subcontractors, please explain how these will be used and the costs of each. Please note the assessors are required to judge the application finances, in terms of value for money i.e. does the proposed cost for effort and deliverables reflect a fair market price.

The costs should cover the following, as applicable.

Directly incurred costs

These are costs that are specific to the project and is the amount actually spent, supported by an audit record in justification of a claim. They include:

• individual labour costs for all those contributing to the project
• material costs (including consumables specific to the project)
• capital equipment costs
• sub-contract costs
• travel and subsistence
• indirect costs
• other costs specifically attributed to the project

Indirect costs

These should relate to the amount of effort deployed on the project. You should calculate them using your own cost rates. They may include:

• general office and basic laboratory consumables
• library services and learning resources
• typing and secretarial
• finance, personnel, public relations and departmental services
• central and distributed computing
• cost of capital employed
• overheads

Itemisation of costs and methods of calculation may be requested to support the application at a later date.

6. Project appendices

Appendices are submitted with the application form. It is important to note that these are intended to contain supporting information and not as an overflow for answers to the application form questions.

In order that assessors can open and read the appendices, each appendix must:

• conform to the maximum length specifications listed
• be submitted in Portable Document Format (.pdf)
• be legible at 100% zoom or magnification
• display prominently the ‘Project title’ as entered on page 1 of the application form
• be named as set out in the instructions given in the general guidance

If you submit appendices longer than specified, they will be truncated and the excess discarded.

Appendices may be printed or photocopied in black and white, so colour should not be used as a way of highlighting important information.