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ORSP Response Time Goals
As an organization focused on providing high-quality customer service to U-M faculty, sponsors, and other U-M offices, the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects (ORSP) values the partnerships we have with our clients as we carry out our mission of enabling and safeguarding the conduct of research and other sponsored activities here at the University of Michigan.
In keeping with the tenet that a mutual understanding of what each party can reasonably expect from the other is central to any successful partnership, ORSP is offering the response time goals below in the hopes of establishing some shared expectations about how quickly ORSP staff are likely able to respond to an inquiry or request to review a document.
ORSP Response Time Goals
| Inquiry or Request | Timing Goal |
|---|---|
| Respond to status inquiries from the Principal Investigator or designated Administrative Point of Contact | 2 to 3 business days |
| Review a Nondisclosure Agreement and reply as needed | 3-5 business days |
| Review all other agreements and reply with a first revision | 10 business days |
| Review and reply to sponsor comments during negotiations for all other agreements | 10 business days |
| Post a response or otherwise reply to a Requested ORSP Action posted in the eResearch Proposal Management system |
2 to 3 business days |
ORSP staff members are committed to making every reasonable effort to achieve these goals, but please note that they are not promises or guarantees.
Mitigating circumstances may sometimes get in the way of staff members’ ability to respond in as timely a fashion as they would like (e.g., complex multiparty agreements; issues requiring additional review outside of ORSP; unusually long agreements of, say, 20 pages or more; slow sponsor response times; temporarily high workloads, etc.). ORSP kindly asks for our customers’ understanding when staff must exercise good professional judgment about how to manage their workloads and multiple priorities in the face of such contingencies.
Helpful Customer Practices
As ORSP’s partners in the U-M research enterprise, our customers often play a critical role in determining how responsive ORSP can actually be. To that end, ORSP recommends a number of helpful Project Team practices.
- Identify one individual who will serve as the single point of contact on all requests and inquiries.
- List the Principal Investigator’s name and explicitly reference the relevant PAF/AWD/UFA.
- Provide complete and accurate information or documents when submitting a request or inquiry.
- Ensure agreements to be negotiated are editable.
- Provide complete sponsor contact information.
Adopting these practices will go a long way toward helping ORSP respond more quickly. Thanks for helping us help you!
What to Do When You Need Something Sooner
ORSP recognizes, of course, that our customers will occasionally need a response that is sooner than the times listed above. When such an urgent matter arises, a member of the Project Team should call their ORSP Project Representative (PR) to explain what’s going on and what the consequences will be if ORSP does not respond within the timeframe needed. The PR will do what he/she can do to honor the Project Team’s request, but please know there is always the possibility that other work may already be in the PR’s queue that is of an even higher priority or even more time sensitive.