Perform group reviews with a projector. Consider meeting in the same room and using a projector to display the document while one person makes changes, instead of printing copies for everyone.
Use electronic annotation tools. Instead of revising printed documents, use the “track changes” feature in Microsoft Word. Or convert your documents to PDF and annotate with Adobe Acrobat Reader or Apple Preview.
Print double-sided. If you must print a draft document, print it double-sided. Ask your IT staff to show you how - they love to feel useful!
Use recycled materials. Always use paper with recycled content wherever possible. Look for paper or corn- based report covers and binders to organize yourself.
Recycle your materials. If you must print draft documents, be sure to recycle them! Let your kids draw on the back, or shred them for packing material.
Use Energy Star™. Be sure your equipment for editing and printing is labeled as Energy Star compliant.
Buy Organic. If you’re up until the wee hours working on your application, use organic coffee as fuel. Serve organic coffee and treats at project meetings and get bonus points if it’s also fair trade!
Work from home. Designate one day per week as “accreditation day” – save gas, turn off the phone, and concentrate on your project without the distractions!
Use AccreditStation for group collaboration. Comment on document content, dynamically create your Element Index, and automatically assemble draft and final versions of your application packages — without using any paper!
Congratulations to Michigan State University, the first accredited institution to use AccreditStation for its renewal application project!
The word is out! AccreditStation® is revolutionizing the way people manage an AAHRPP® accreditation application project.
Last year we doubled our number of clients for the fourth year in a row – proving that more and more people are ready to concentrate on the quality of their application materials instead of wallowing in piles of paper!
Our clients tell us that they’re choosing AccreditStation in order to maximize the efficiency of their accreditation processes. By conserving staff resources, eliminating paper waste, and reducing mistakes they’re stretching their project dollars further – an essential move in times of budget tightening!
Visit our website to read testimonials from our happy clients, to view our demonstration videos, and to check out this month’s special sign-up offer!
Most accreditation projects stall because the other job responsibilities of team members get in the way. This is especially true if the project manager is also trying to run the IRB or compliance office. It’s hard to pay attention to the big picture projects when day-to-day crisis management tasks occupy all of your energy.
- If you can dedicate a full time person to be in charge of the process, do it!
- If you can’t dedicate someone on your staff to manage the project, hire a consultant! Having an outside voice of authority is usually a motivating factor, and experienced consultants can help you with everything from providing templates to content expertise to project management. If you don’t know where to find a consultant, contact us – we know several seasoned veterans (not on our payroll) who’d be happy to hold your hand.
Three years ago, you would have found the clients of Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, President of HRP Associates, Inc., burning the midnight oil as they tried to organize and assemble all of the documents for their AAHRPP® accreditation application. Surrounded by piles of paper and wrestling with Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, they would spend precious hours renumbering pages, revising element indexes, and aggregating PDF files.
But today, they’re able to accomplish all of these tasks in a fraction of the time using AccreditStation. Collaborating remotely with clients through the AccreditStation tool, Dr. Cohen is able to help more institutions get accredited in less time – concentrating effort on the content and quality of the accreditation materials, instead of on the technical complications of organizing and assembling an application package.
Applying his 30 years of experience to the improvement of human research protection (HRP) policies and practices, Dr. Cohen has helped 9 institutions achieve AAHRPP accreditation with another 10 in the process of applying, establishing himself as an “Accreditation Guru” in the process. “The most satisfying part of my job is passing on the lessons learned from my previous accreditation projects,” states Dr. Cohen, “If I can prevent people from reinventing the wheel, they can get accredited more quickly, improve the quality of their HRP program, and get back to the important work of protecting human subjects.”
As an AccreditStation Affiliate since 2007, HRP Associates, Inc. has been certified as an authorized provider of application support, and can offer special AccreditStation rates to its clients. Along with its network of experts, HRPA has the critically important expertise to assist institutions with a wide range of activities designed to ensure that their human research protections programs are ethically sound and legally compliant.
There’s more to an accreditation budget than paying the application fee.
Consider these other factors when you establish your project budget:
- Figure out the hourly rate of all staff members involved in the process (salary + benefits, divided by the number of hours per year that they work – typically 2000)
- Figure out the average number of hours per week each person will be able to dedicate to the project
- Now that you have the weekly cost of the project, multiply that by the number of weeks in your project timeline.
- Be sure to add in technology costs, application fees, consultant fees, conferences, travel, etc.
- Take a deep breath.
- Now make sure everyone is aware of the budget and the impact delays will have on the bottom line.
Knowing the real cost will help with decision making, and calculating return on investment (ROI) when considering options such as consultants or technology purchases to speed up the process.
There’s a lot to do when getting organized to start a big project like this! The ones we’ve highlighted below are those we’ve found to be most frequently overlooked.
- After you figure out who will be on your accreditation team, and establish roles and responsibilities for your team members. Figuring this out in advance will help you avoid stepping on toes, or missing important tasks because you assumed someone else was handling something they didn’t know they were supposed to handle!
- If you are the only person on the team – get HELP!
- Make sure the person in charge of the team has a Type A personality — he or she must love to make lists, keep spreadsheets updated, and have an unnatural affinity for post-it notes and office supplies.
- Establish a project timeline and milestones so you can measure your progress. If you’ve never worked on a large, long-term project before, consider investing in a project management book (read it – don’t just buy it!) to familiarize yourself with basic concepts.
- Figure out how you’re going to handle the technology side of things – store all your documents in one place, make sure everyone has the access they need, decide how to name your documents and handle version control. This might be a good time to check out our AccreditStation™ product (hint, hint).
Look for more detail on these topics in the coming weeks – we love to rattle on about the importance of organizational skills and project management!
