SC PIER Plan Guidance for Interagency Solicitations

All applications to the Office of Science (SC) for funding, with the exception of conference proposals and supplemental funding proposals, must include a PIER Plan. This includes applications that SC intends to fund resulting from a joint solicitation with another Federal agency where the mechanics of the solicitation are managed by the partnering Federal agency.

SC periodically collaborates with other Federal agencies to issue joint solicitations where the other agency manages the solicitation and peer review process in consultation with the partnering SC program office. Typically in these collaborations, SC makes preliminary selections of proposals resulting from this solicitation process and then instructs those selected applicants to submit their application materials to the SC Open Call (Continuation of Solicitation for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program) to facilitate the SC award. The SC program office then adds the merit review evaluations obtained by the partnering agency to the applicant record in PAMS and follows its standard award selection process in PAMS.

The following guidance is provided to ensure the SC PIER Plan requirements are met for applications selected from joint interagency solicitations not managed by SC.

The guidance assumes:

• the proposal(s) that SC plans to select for award are resubmitted to SC through the SC Open Call after the solicitation process led by the partnering agency is complete;
• these circumstances are rare; and
• that SC is funding the entire proposal (i.e., SC is not just funding the DOE Lab components of the proposal).

Guidance:

To the extent possible, the SC program office should work with the partnering agency to ensure the PIER Plan proposal element is included in the required application materials, attached as an appendix to the proposal narrative, and the PIER Plan review criterion is included the merit review process.

• If the partnering agency is able to include the PIER Plan proposal element as part of the application materials, but is not able to include the PIER Plan criterion as part of the merit review process:
  • After the selected applicants have submitted their applications materials to the SC Open Call, the responsible SC program office must have the PIER Plan merit reviewed internally (i.e., reviewed by three SC program managers, not to include the SC program manager(s) managing the solicitation).
• If the partnering agency is not able to include the PIER Plan proposal element as part of the application materials at all:
  • The SC program must instruct the selected applications to include a PIER Plan with their application materials submitted to the Open Call, and include appropriate guidance regarding scope and page limit. The PIER Plan should be attached to the proposal narrative as an appendix. The SC program office must have the PIER Plan reviewed internally (i.e., reviewed by three SC program managers, not to include the SC program manager(s) managing the solicitation).