Qualification support 2022

• Companies with registered business address in the Municipality of Oslo
• Municipal undertakings and agencies in the Municipality of Oslo
• Municipally owned companies in the Municipality of Oslo
• State owned undertakings with business address in Oslo

See also definition of public sector bodies

When processing applications from business and industry, we will prioritise projects from small and medium-sized enterprises and applications from larger companies with little or no research experience.

Sole proprietorships, non-profit organizations  and research organizations cannot apply.

It is recommended that the applicant establish contact and collaboration with research environments already during the application phase, in order to access relevant competence. If needed you may contact one of the competence brokers in Oslo. Competence brokers provide free assistance to identify relevant research environments for your R&D project, among other things.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The organisation that applies shall be listed as the project owner in the application form and must have approved the submission of the application.

If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the project owner submits the application on behalf of all the collaboration partners.

Requirement relating to the project manager/principal investigator

The professional competence and suitability of the principal investigator to implement the project will be evaluated administratively.

Requirement regarding employment

The principal investigator must be employed by the project owner or one of the collaboration partners.

Requirements for collaboration partners

The project owner (applicant) can collaborate with other partners:

• Business and industry within all sectors with a registered business address in Norway
• Public actors in Norway, within and outside Oslo

Any partners must be registered under "Partners and R&D suppliers" in the application form.

R&D suppliers

The project owner and any collaboration partners may engage undertakings to carry out R&D activities in the project.

The R&D suppliers’ suitability will be subject to professional consideration. The R&D supplier may be approved R&D organizations or other organizations with a considerable R&D activity.

R&D suppliers shall not contribute to financing the project and do not have intellectual property rights to the project results. R&D partners deliver work according to assignments and shall receive remuneration according to market price.

Read more about collaboration partners and R&D suppliers on the website of the Research council of Norway.

RRF Oslo can support project costs related to R&D activities in the project.

Support may cover direct and indirect project costs to the extent they are costs for industrial research or experimental development. This applies both to costs for R&D activities you carry out yourself and costs you have for acquiring R&D services.

You can find detailed and important information on this website about what the budget may contain.

Grant support may be used for:

• payroll and indirect expenses
• procurement of R&D services
• other operating expenses: travel and accommodation, dissemination, materials, or the project's share of depreciation costs for equipment and research infrastructure that the project is dependent on using

The grant support cannot be used for:

• mapping of literature and research front
• purchasing equipment with an acquisition cost of more than NOK 80 000
• measures to exploit R&D results, such as protection of IPR, market research and marketing, testing and completion of new products or services
• activities of an operational character
• preparing an application for a main project

We do not grant support for costs that will not be posted in the project responsible or project partners’ official accounts, for example unpaid work effort. Therefore, you shall not include any such costs in the budget.

Calculation of support

We can grant support between 100 000- 350 000 Noks per project in this call. You can apply for funding to cover up to 50 per cent of the project costs. The scope of funding for project costs for companies covered within the maximum 50 per cent limit depends on the size of the company and the type of R&D activities to be carried out.

See the table below and read more about state aid on our website under Article 25: Aid for research and development projects.

Type of company/type of activity	Industrial research	Experimental development
Small business	50%	45%
Medium-sized business	50%	35%
Large business	50%	25%

For applications awarded funding, we will assess to what extent the funding increases R&D investments from the Project Owner and project partners. 

Conditions for funding

Projects that receive funding must start no later than one month after the grant letter. The latest project final date allowed is 12 months after the start of the project.

Support for "undertakings" constitute state aid. As a rule, an "undertaking" is a company, but in this context means any actor that carries out economic activity consisting of offering goods and/or services in a market. This can also apply to publicly owned undertakings or companies. When an undertaking is to have part of its project costs covered, either as a project owner or as a partner in the project, this must be done in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014).  Read more about state aid on the Research Council's website.

Applications that do not meet the requirements of the call will be rejected.

Reporting and disbursement of aid

We disburse 75 per cent of the aid at the start of the project.

The rest will be disbursed at the end of the project, provided the final report and project accounts are approved. The actual grant amount is based on expenses accounted for the project in the project owner's ordinary accounts. Only actual costs included in the project owner's accounts will be covered.

Available tools

Applicants can use tools developed by the Research Council and/or KS when preparing the application

You can also ask for advice from one of the competence brokers in Oslo. The competence brokers can assist in finding a relevant research partner, and give you tips and advice for your proposal. 

You can save and revise your application while working on it. Once the application has been submitted, it cannot be changed.

The application and all of the attachments must be submitted in Norwegian or English.

• All attachments must be in PDF format.
• Only applications submitted via the web portal will be assessed

Other terms

• We grant funds in accordance with current EEA rules for state aid for undertakings participating in the projects. The Ministry of Education and Research has notified the grant scheme for Regional Research Funds to ESA under regulations on general block exemption regulation for state aid. 1, cf. the EEA Agreement Annexe XV no. 1j (Regulation (EU) no. 651/2014).
• Grants are awarded with up to a maximum stated amount in the decision document and grant letter.
• Conditions for co-financing and liquidity must be met before funds can be disbursed
• There are requirements set for accounting and reporting, see RFF Oslo's website.
• If projects that have received grants are not completed or in the event of non-reporting, RFF Oslo can demand that grants be repaid

Mandatory attachments

• Project description with a maximum length of 5 pages. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of this web page. We will only assess projects descriptions written in this template.
• CV for project manager/principal investigator.
• Form for partner information. This form shall also be filled in for enterprises that are project responsible. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of this web page.
• Self-declaration for private undertakings. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of this web page.

Applications that do not meet the above requirements will be rejected.

Optional attachments

• CV for key participants in the project

Links to websites and documents, as well as other attachments other than those specified above as mandatory, will not be included in the application review process.

There is no technical validation of the content of the attachments you upload, so please make sure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

We assess the grant applications according to these criteria:

1. Excellence
2. Impact
3. Implementation
4. Project idea relevance to the call for proposals

In addition, an "overall" assessment is formulated "for the applications.

• To what extent does the innovation idea represent something new?
• To what extent is the innovation idea aimed at clear needs or new market opportunities for the private or public enterprise applying for a grant for the project?
• To what extent are R&D activities in the qualification project suitable for clarifying the need for research in the further development of the innovation idea?

• To what extent can the innovation idea have potential for business profits for the project owner?
• To what extent can the innovation idea help make the project owner more sustainable according to UN goals for sustainable development?
• To what extent can the innovation idea have positive sustainability or societal effects?
• To what extent are the potential impacts and effects of the innovation idea formulated and substantiated?

• How good is the project plan with respect to goals, work packages, milestones and resources?
• To what extent will the project have access to the necessary R&D expertise?
• To what extent does the project appear strategically prioritised by the project owner?
• Does the applicant have a credible ambition for further development of the innovation idea once the qualification project has been completed? (e.g. in the form of a main project)

• To what extent will support from RRF Oslo trigger increased R&D investment in the project owner that is applying and adds value to the project beyond the financial support?
• How well is the topic of the qualification project linked to RRF Oslo's priority areas.

Grant applications for qualification support are assessed by the administration. The administration then writes a recommendation to the board of directors for RRF Oslo, which makes decisions on grants and rejections.

Thos i san open-ended call, and applications are processed according to the RFF board of directors procedures for assessing proposals in open-ended calls. You can find the procedures here (Norwegian only). 

The list of grants is published here.