Funding competition Driving the Electric Revolution: Building Talent for the Future 2

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £4.5 million for innovative skills, talent, and training projects for Power Electronics, Motors and Drives (PEMD). This funding is from the Driving the Electric Revolution challenge.

This competition is now closed.

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Competition sections

Description

Innovate UK’s Driving the Electric Revolution challenge, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £4.5 million in projects building talent for the future.

The aim of this competition is to create and deliver course content and materials that will support skills, talent and training across Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) manufacturing and supply chains. The purpose of this is to build awareness of PEMD and fill key gaps in the UK's workforce talent and training capabilities.

Opportunities could include but are not limited to:

  • schools’ engagement
  • apprenticeships and internships
  • upskilling and reskilling of existing workforce
  • technical courses and vocational training
  • undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development (CPD)

Your proposal must deliver a clear, game-changing intervention and address a clear industrial requirement. This must realistically and significantly meet and provide a long-term commitment to supporting the UK PEMD industry talent requirement.

The Building Talent for the Future 2 competition has two strands:

  • Driving the Electric Revolution – Building Talent for the Future 2 – for projects with costs up to £50,000 (this strand)
  • Driving the Electric Revolution – Building Talent for the Future 2 – full stage for projects invited following a successful expression of interest application

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. The competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

Funding type

Grant

Project size

Your total project costs must be no more than £50,000.

Who can apply

Your project

This competition is open to single applicants and collaborations.

Your project must:

  • have total project costs of no more than £50,000
  • start by 1 October 2022
  • last between 6 and 12 months
  • carry out its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 5 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request. If you have not asked for approval or your request has not been approved by us you will be made ineligible and your application will not be sent for assessment.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian source.

Lead organisation

To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account.

If collaborating, the lead and at least one other organisation must request funding by entering their costs during the application.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs and must be listed in your application.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.

We expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

Number of applications

An organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications across both strands of the competition.

If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to 3 applications across both strands of the competition.

If the number of applications your organisation wants to be involved in falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 5 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

Previous applications

You can use apreviously submitted application to apply for this competition.

We will not award you funding if you have:

Minimal financial assistance (and De minimis where applicable)

Grant funding in this competition is awarded as Minimal Financial assistance (MFA). This allows public bodies to award up to £315,000 to an enterprise in a 3 year rolling financial period.

In your application, you will be asked to declare previous funding received by you. This will form part of the financial checks ahead of Innovate UK making a formal grant offer.

To establish your eligibility, we need to check that our support added to the amount you have previously received does not exceed the limit of £315,000 in the ‘applicable period’.

The applicable period is made up of:

(a) the elapsed part of the current financial year

(b) the two financial years immediately preceding the current financial year

You must include any funding which you have received during the applicable period under:

You do not need to include aid or subsidies which have been granted on a different basis (for example, aid award granted under the General Block Exemption Regulation).

Further information about the UK subsidy control requirements can be found in:

EU Commission rules now only apply in limited circumstances. Please see our general guidance to check if these rules apply to your organisation.

Further information

If you are unsure about your obligations under the UK’s International Obligations to Subsidy Control or the De minimis rules, you should take independent legal advice. We cannot advise on individual eligibility or your legal obligations.

If there are any changes to the above requirements that mean we need to change the terms of this competition, we will tell you as soon as possible.

Funding

Innovate UK have allocated up to £4.5 million to fund projects across both strands of the Building Talent for the Future 2 competition.

You can claim up to 100% of your total eligible costs, up to a limit of £50,000.

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the Company accounts guidance. This is a change from the EU definition unless you are applying under European Commission De minimis.

If you are applying for an award funded under European Commission Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Your proposal

This competition is to create and deliver course content and materials that will support skills, talent and training across PEMD manufacturing and supply chain; building awareness of PEMD and filling key gaps in the UK's workforce talent and training capabilities.

Your project must demonstrate:

  • strong industrial links and a well-defined industry focus
  • an understanding and awareness of the PEMD industrial skills that are currently lacking and possible future requirements to enable the workforce
  • an innovative, ambitious and realistic idea to meet a significant PEMD talent requirement
  • planning for, and commitment to, creating and maintaining the resource on an ongoing basis for a minimum period of 3 years after project completion
  • that you will provide new opportunities not already available to the UK, a region or group of underrepresented people
  • that it has the capacity and capability to be delivered successfully and on time
  • value for money and evidence a return on investment, in terms of trained, upskilled and reskilled people
  • compatibility with the PEMD Skills Hub

You can:

  • produce content and material for outreach, engagement and learning purposes
  • conduct PEMD outreach and engagement exercises to individuals, academia, industry and other groups
  • generate and deliver course material or facilitate the running of courses
  • provide training or incentives for training to specific groups of underrepresented people or in specific training subjects

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

We want to fund a portfolio of projects, across both strands of the competition, to cover a variety of key industrial needs and gaps in UK PEMD workforce skills, talent pipeline and training capabilities.

Specific themes

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

  • defining and filling key gaps in the UK’s PEMD manufacturing and supply chain workforce and training capability
  • producing industry compatible training programs in PEMD
  • promoting skills in design for manufacture and design for assembly
  • increasing interaction between academia or training establishments and industry to ensure skills streams for the future, including apprenticeships, internships, sandwich courses
  • delivering academic courses or practical training areas such as: schools’ engagement, upskilling and reskilling of existing workforce, technical courses and vocational training, undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development (CPD)
  • improving the quality and capacity of existing training delivery
  • outreach and engagement material focusing on PEMD for all ages and levels in academia and industry
  • supporting and promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion within PEMD technology training, manufacturing, or research
  • providing training or incentives for training to specific underrepresented groups of people or in specific training subjects

Projects we will not fund

We are not funding projects in this strand that:

  • involve primary production in fishery and aquaculture
  • involve primary production in agriculture
  • are not allowed under De minimis regulation restrictions
  • are not allowed under Minimal Financial Assistance
  • are not related to PEMD skills
  • are PEMD CR&D projects
  • are dependent on export performance
  • are dependent on domestic inputs usage
  • concern maintenance, servicing mechanics or aftermarket support
  • have total project costs in excess of £50,000

7 March 2022
Online briefing event: watch the recording
11 March 2022
Competition opens
27 April 2022 11:00am
Competition closes
1 July 2022
Applicants notified

Before you start

You must read the guidance on applying for a competition on the Innovation Funding Service before you start.

What we ask you

The application is split into 3 sections:

1. Project details.

2. Application questions.

3. Finances.

1. Project details

This section provides background for the assessors and is not scored.


Application team

Decide which organisations will work with you on the project. Invite people from those organisations to help complete the application.

Application details

The lead applicant must complete this section. Give your project’s title, start date and duration.

Subsidy basis

Will the project, including any related activities, you want Innovate UK to fund, affect trade between Northern Ireland and the EU?

You and all your project partners must respond and mark this question as complete, before you can submit your application.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We collect and report on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) data to address under-representation in business innovation and ensure equality, diversity and inclusion across all our activities.

All participants must complete this EDI survey and the lead applicant must then select yes in the application question. The survey will ask you questions on your gender, age, ethnicity and disability status. You will always have the option to ‘prefer not to say’ if you do not feel comfortable sharing this information.

Project summary

Describe your project briefly and be clear about what makes it innovative. We use this section to assign the right experts to assess your application.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

Public description

Describe your project in detail and in a way that you are happy to see published. Do not include any commercially sensitive information. If we award your project funding, we will publish this description. This could happen before you start your project.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

Scope

Describe how your project fits the scope of the competition. If your project is not in scope it will be immediately rejected and will not be sent for assessment. We will tell you the reason why.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

2. Application questions

The assessors will score all your answers apart from questions 1 and 6. You will receive feedback for each scored question.

You must answer all questions. Do not include any website addresses (URLs) in your answers.

Question 1. Applicant location (not scored)

You must state the name of your organisation along with its full registered address.

If you are working in collaboration you must also state the name and full registered address of all your partner organisations.

We are collecting this information to understand the geographical location of all participants of a project.

Your answer to this question can be up to 400 words long.

Question 2. Industry skills requirements and landscape awareness

What is your idea and what are the PEMD skills shortages that it will address? How will your project increase awareness of PEMD as a key technology and the opportunities that it offers?

Explain:

  • the clear industry driven requirement and desire to take up your training idea
  • the skills shortage or training needed within PEMD
  • how you identified these skills shortages
  • the current state of interaction between industry and training resource providers within PEMD
  • any direct industrial support that may be available to you for example: access to equipment and facilities, placements or interviews
  • the nearest current provision available, and its limitations
  • any work you have already done to respond to this need
  • how your project will increase your current training capacities or develop a new training resource
  • how your proposed training will exceed current and future requirements

Your answer to this question can be up to 600 words long.

You can submit one appendix to support your answer. It can include Letters of Support, diagrams and charts. It must be a PDF and can be up to 4 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

This question is scored out of 25.

Question 3. Approach and deliverables

What approach will you take and where will the focus of the training be? How will your project engage with the Skills Hub?

Explain:

  • how you will respond to the need, challenge or opportunity identified
  • how you will improve on the current training provision in the UK
  • how your training will be accredited or how you will ensure industry acceptance
  • if your training will be offered on a local, regional or national scale
  • which skills types and or level will your training be targeting, for example: schools’ engagement, apprenticeships and internships, upskilling and reskilling of existing workforce, technical courses, vocational training, undergraduate, postgraduate, and continual personal development (CPD)
  • the development of outreach and engagement material focusing on PEMD for all ages and levels in academia and industry
  • the delivery mechanism you plan to use and why, for example: virtual, face to face, practical based in a workshop or laboratory, sandwich courses, industrial placements
  • the number of learner days per year at each skill level that your resource will provide
  • what engagement you have already had or plan to have with the Skills hub
  • how the outputs of your project will be compatible with the PEMD skills hub

Your answer to this question can be up to 600 words long.

You can submit one appendix to support your answer. It can include diagrams and charts. It must be a PDF and can be up to 4 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

This question is scored out of 25.

Question 4. Project delivery, costs and team

How will the project plan be delivered and costed? Does your proposed project team have the right experience and resources to deliver this project?

Describe your project plan including:

  • an outline of what the funding will be spent on, explaining the project work plan including technical approaches, main work packages, specific milestones, and project management
  • a breakdown of costs for the delivery of your training, production or procurement of the training facilities, and the development of the training material
  • your ability to deliver this project within the required timeframe given your existing commitments
  • any wider support you may need during or after project completion that you do not currently have access to, such as: partnerships, private finance, or export advice explain why you will need this

Explain:

  • the main risks, interdependencies, impact, and mitigation strategy
  • how you will mitigate project delivery risks with your immediate and extended teams, for example supply chain and end users

You must describe:

  • the roles, skills and experience of all members of the project team, including subcontractors, that are relevant to the approach you will be taking
  • the interaction between the training provider and end user
  • the current relationships between project partners and subcontractors and how these will change as a result of the project
  • your access to existing resources, equipment, industrial facilities
  • your current position in the skills community and supply or value chains
  • any roles you will need to recruit for to ensure successful implementation of your project

Your answer can be up to 600 words long.

You must submit a project plan or Gantt chart as an appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 4 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

You must also submit a risk register as a second appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

This question is scored out of 25.

Question 5. Exploitation, continuity planning, impact and added value

How will your project outcomes be exploited and continued beyond the grant funding? What will be the direct impact and added value of your project on the UK PEMD skills community?

Describe:

  • your route to market and the commercialisation strategy you plan to use
  • your continuity planning after grant funding to maintain the ongoing skills resource
  • how will the training resource provide an on-going commitment to the PEMD skills community
  • the expected impact of your project on the PEMD industry skills needs
  • the likely impact of your project on the organisations involved
  • your project’s expected impact on the economy, regions, the environment and government priorities
  • how your project supports and promotes equality, diversity, and inclusion within PEMD technology training, manufacturing, or research
  • how you will measure your project’s impact, for example KPIs or similar metrics
  • what advantages would public funding offer your project, for example, appeal to investors, more partners, reduced risk or a faster route to market (this list is not exhaustive)
  • how this project represents value for money for you and the taxpayer

Your answer to this question can be up to 600 words long.

This question is scored out of 25.

Question 6. Minimal Financial Assistance declaration (not scored)

You must download the declaration template and distribute among all partners requesting funding on your project. Each organisation must complete this, declaring any funding received under Minimal Financial Assistance (previously referred to as Special Drawing Rights) or De minimis awards, (from any source of public funding) in the applicable period.

Each partner organisation must complete all the fields on the form before uploading.

You must upload each completed declaration as an appendix. It must be a PDF and no larger than 10 MB. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

After uploading write ‘declaration attached’ in the question text box.

You and your partners must keep all documentation relating to Minimal Financial Assistance (previously referred to as Special Drawing Rights) and other De minimis awards for a period of 6 years and be prepared to release it to any public funding body which requests it.

3. Finances

Each organisation in your project must complete their own project costs, organisation details and funding details in the application. Academic institutions must complete and upload a Je-S form.

For full details on what costs you can claim see our project costs guidance.

Background and further information

The world is turning electric across every sector of society, from energy generation for our homes, travel by road, rail, air or sea, and how things are made.

Electric and hybrid vehicles, domestic appliances and other applications are creating a massive need for next-generation power electronics, electric machines and drives (PEMD).

For the UK to be able to design, develop and manufacture these products, we need to have skilled people across all levels.

The Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge was launched in July 2019 by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).

Driving the Electric Revolution is an investment of £80 million. It was set up to help UK businesses seize the opportunities presented by the transition to a low carbon economy. The challenge aims to create world leading supply chains in the UK and expertise for the manufacture of power electronics, machines and drives (PEMD) across multiple sectors.

This is part of a larger effort across many technologies and sectors to catalyse the government’s green industrial revolution in transport, energy, and industrial sectors, aligned to the ten-point plan.

Find a project partner

If you want help to find a project partner, contact the Innovate UK KTN.

Support for SMEs from Innovate UK EDGE

If you receive an award, you will be contacted about working with an innovation and growth specialist at Innovate UK EDGE. This service forms part of our funded offer to you.

These specialists focus on growing innovative businesses and ensuring that projects contribute to their growth. Working one-to-one, they can help you to identify your best strategy and harness world-class resources to grow and achieve scale.

We encourage you to engage with Innovate UK EDGE, delivered by a knowledgeable and objective specialist near you.

Contact us

If you need more information about how to apply or you want to submit your application in Welsh, email support@iuk.ukri.org or call 0300 321 4357.
Our phone lines are open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Innovate UK is committed to making support for applicants accessible to everyone.

We can provide help for applicants who face barriers when making an application. This might be as a result of a disability, neurodiversity or anything else that makes it difficult to use our services. We can also give help and make other reasonable adjustments for you if your application is successful.

If you think you need more support, it is important that you contact our Customer Support Service as early as possible during your application process. You should aim to contact us no later than 10 working days before the competition closing date.

Need help with this service? Contact us