Neil Sandford has a technological background that ranges from speech recognition work in the early 1970s through to the latest interactive technologies of the internet. He was managing director of The Soft Option, one of the UK's first multimedia software companies, from 1984 to 1991 and has subsequently consulted under the strap-line "Putting People Before Computers". He has extensive experience of the public and private sectors, working alongside technical and managerial staff at all levels in the UK, Europe and the USA and managing seven-figure budgets.Since 2006, Neil's time has increasingly been spent supporting consortia bidding for EC funding. Conventional wisdom says that over-subsciption to calls for proposals result in a probability of funding such as '1 in 5', '1 in 12' or even '1 in 20' depending on the topic. Neil begs to differ. A well-written proposal describing a supportable piece of work has a probability of around 1:2 or perhaps 1:3. The rest have no chance at all.Neil has helped major clients raise nearly €60m over the last five years from the IST/ICT, Research Infrastructures and Science and Society programmes. 75% of proposals have been funded and the average score (including failed proposals) is currently 13.5 out of 15. Neil also offers a range of services for bidding consortia, including proposal pre-evaluation and post-mortems