Innovate UK’s Driving the Electric Revolution challenge, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £4.5million in projects building talent for the future.

The aim of this competition is to create and deliver course content and materials that will support skills, talent and training across Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) manufacturing and supply chains. The purpose of this is to build awareness of PEMD and fill key gaps in the UK's workforce talent and training capabilities.

Opportunities could include but are not limited to:

• schools’ engagement
• apprenticeships and internships
• upskilling and reskilling of existing workforce
• technical courses and vocational training
• undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development (CPD)

Your proposal must deliver a clear, game-changing intervention and address a clear industrial requirement. This must realistically and significantly meet and provide a long-term commitment to supporting the UK PEMD industry talent requirement.

The Building Talent for the Future 2 competition has two strands:

• Driving the Electric Revolution – Building Talent for the Future 2 – for projects with costs up to £50,000 (this strand)
• Driving the Electric Revolution – Building Talent for the Future 2 – full stage for projects invited following a successful expression of interest application
  

This competition is open to single applicants and collaborations.

Your project must:

• have total project costs of no more than £50,000
• start by 1 October 2022
• last between 6 and 12 months
• carry out its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size, research organisation, research and technology organisation (RTO), academic institution, charity, not-for-profit, or public sector organisation
• demonstrate clear industrial support for your application, covering a cross section of technologies and sectors
• work in, or have strong industrial ties with the PEMD sector

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:

• business of any size
• research organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)
• academic institution
• charity
• not-for-profit
• public sector organisation

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account.

If collaborating, the lead and at least one other organisation must request funding by entering their costs during the application.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs and must be listed in your application.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.

We expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

An organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications across both strands of the competition.

If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to 3 applications across both strands of the competition.