Award Acceptance

8.7 Companion Project Set-Up

In cases where projects involve the collaboration of two or more investigators, all contributing significant effort, those investigators should choose to establish companion projects.

Significant effort includes when an individual:

• Has responsibility for the conduct of a key component of the project objectives; and/or
• Has committed more than 10% of his/her effort to the project; and/or
• Is supervising students or staff in the performance of project objectives; and/or
• Will be receiving 15% or more of the total project funding.

With companion projects, an investigator is designated as a Project Executive (PE) and assigned a sub-account for his/her portion of the research. A companion project allocates funds, including indirect costs, to the designated administrative department/unit. There is still only one Principal Investigator (PI) who remains responsible for overseeing the award.

Please review the Procedure on how to Establish Companion Projects or F&A Distribution for detailed guidance. 

Once a companion project is set-up, you may encounter problems viewing the financial information in Management Reports. Even though the PI should always be able to view the award information, it's not uncommon to not be able to view sub-accounts when the administrative department changes. To prevent limitations, please use General Accounting's Security Authorization form to allow viewing access for all responsible parties, including the departmental accountants and administrators who monitor the project.

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1. Receipt of Award
2. Negotiation/Acceptance
3. Insurance/Risk Management
4. Signatory Authority
5. Project Set-Up
   1. Research Project Flow Chart
6. Pre-Award/Preliminary Project Set-Up
7. Companion Project Set-Up