OGC allows the dean of the downtown campus’s colleges to determine PI eligibility. Please see the CEDC PI eligibility policy posted on the Policies & Procedures page of this website.

The Office of Grants and Contracts requires all potential principal investigators (PI) to complete an online PI training. This training lasts approximately 1.5 hours and can be completed in smaller chunks of time if you need it. The training is designed to help all PIs understand CU Denver's processes, policies and tools available to successfully manage your award. The courses are offered through the SkillSoft portal:  

• Research Administration for Faculty; Course No. A00139
• Direct Charging to Sponsored Projects, Course No. U00059
• Electronic Personnel Effort Reporting, Course No. U00055
• Please note that OGC will not set up your award unless you have completed this training.

All potential principal investigators, senior personnel and collaborators (even from different institutions) must have a current Conflict of Interest disclosure on file. The conflict of interest form is submitted through infoEd at era.cu.edu.

The following chart outlines who is responsible for what during proposal creation, routing, and submission. Please note any applicable departmental variations.

Effective July 1, 2020, only new proposal applications and new contract agreements will need to be routed. This includes competing continuation or renewal proposals and supplements, which are considered to be new projects. Please contact your pre-award manager if you receive a sponsor document authorizing funds for your project and they will assist you. More information can be found in the OGC Routing Process Changes Announcement.

Pre-applications, letters of intent, phase or step 1 proposals

• Route only if an institutional endorsement is required and a full detailed budget is needed for submission.
• Notify OGC via email at xenia@ucdenver.edu if an institutional endorsement is required but a detailed budget is not needed for submission.
• No need to notify or route if no institutional endorsement is required and no detailed budget is needed for submission.

Pre-applications with acceptance of specific conditions required at time of submission

An exception letter is available; however, be prepared for OGC to need time to review the conditions prior to submission. Email the proposal documents including the solicitation and conditions to xenia@ucdenver.edu.

Non-monetary routings for institutional negotiation and signature

A contract can be a master agreement Sponsored Research Agreement (SRA), Material Transfer Agreement (MTA), Non-disclosure Agreement or Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement (NDA/CDA), or a contract can be a stand-alone SRA, MTA, NDA/CDA. Each one is dealt with in a different manner:

• SRA (both master and stand-alone): route through infoEd; reviewed by OGC Contracts. Contact your pre-award administrator for assistance with this. Terms may need to be also reviewed by CU Venture Partners or CU Innovations, so please be aware of the extra time needed for this step.
• MTA and NDA/CDAs (both master and stand-alone): route through CRAO at https://ucdenverdata.formstack.com/forms/rss_ra_ogc_ra.

No-cost extensions (NCE)

Federal sponsors can allow the PI to extend the end date of the project period by a year without going through a formal request process. This can vary by sponsor and by award, so please check with your pre-award manager if you have any questions about whether this applies to your award. OGC’s webpage on the NCE procedure is available here: https://research.cuanschutz.edu/ogc/home/award-lifecycle/post-award/award-set-up/no-cost-extensions. Please note that the NSF NCE process must be conducted through Research.gov and not Fastlane.

OGC has two routing deadlines based upon the type of submission you are planning.

• Proposals requiring submission by an AOR: 12 business days prior to the sponsor’s deadline. This includes proposals being submitted through Grants.gov, Fastlane, Research.gov, and DOE’s eBRAP.
• Proposals not requiring submission by an AOR: five business days prior to the sponsor's deadline.

Note: If you are a collaborator on another institution's submission, their institutional routing deadline is our final deadline and you should plan routing around their deadline and not the sponsor's.

If you are submitting through a sponsor portal such as Fastlane, Research.gov, or Workspace, you will need to load your documents into the portal and allow your pre-award manager access to the proposal. You will need to load a document for every element the sponsor requires. The pre-award manager will print the proposal documents directly from the sponsor portal for routing.

Documents to be in final form at the time of routing

Routing is an electronic process where all approvals for the submission are obtained. Your pre-award manager will initiate routing for you. The PI will receive an e-mail with detailed instructions and a link to their routed proposal. Completing the instructions from that e-mail is what officially starts the routing process. If there are co-PIs on the proposal, they must also approve the proposal as part of the routing process.

OGC typically wants five business days to review and return a proposal. When OGC completes the proposal review, they will send you and your pre-award manager an e-mail indicating the review is complete and note any items requiring changes prior to submission. If the proposal is routed after the 12 business day deadline, the proposal will be marked as a late routing and only the budget will be checked for compliance.

Any document other than the budget and justification can be changed after routing and prior to submission, and minor changes to the budget can be made if they do not impact the scope of the project. However, if the scope of the project changes substantially, the proposal documents will need to be re-routed.

The OGC submission deadline for proposals requiring submission by an AOR is four business days prior to the sponsor’s deadline. This is to accommodate any technical difficulties encountered during the submission process, and allow any subsequent corrections to be made prior to the sponsor deadline.

Submissions done through infoEd

The PI should confirm to the pre-award manager that all documents loaded into infoEd are complete and final and the proposal is ready for submission. The pre-award manager will check the proposal documents, run the required compliance checks in infoEd, and ensure that the proposal is assembled for submission. The PI will then be notified to send an email to eapp.xenia@ucdenver.edu alerting OGC that the proposal is ready for submission. Allow several hours for submission, particularly on standard NIH submission days.

Submissions done through a sponsor portal requiring AOR submission

The PI should confirm to the pre-award manager that all proposal documents are complete and final and the proposal is ready for submission. The pre-award manager will check the proposal documents. The PI will then be notified to release the proposal to AOR access and to send an email to eapp.xenia@ucdenver.edu alerting OGC that the proposal is ready for submission. Allow several hours for submission, particularly on standard NIH submission days.

Submissions done by the PI

The PI should follow the sponsor’s instructions for submission and should notify the pre-award manager when the submission is complete. The PI should provide a copy of the final submission to the pre-award manager. The pre-award manager will update the infoEd file with the final submission document and change the proposal status in infoEd to “PI/Dept submission.