Initial Phase of Project Wahoo Underway

February 28, 2017

In January of 2017, Project Wahoo kicked off at UCF. The purpose of the project is to increase the amount of research awards the university receives in order to attain the status of being among the top 50 research universities by the year 2035. To accomplish this ambitious goal, teams from several departments will work together with an outside consultant to assess the current research administration business procedures to create a more effective process. The team is also tasked to construct enabling technology infrastructure and to incorporate best practices that are being used by peer institutions.

During this first phase, teams are in the process of reviewing and assessing research-related business processes such as:

• Organizational structures
• Workflow
• Responsibility policies
• Compliance functions

Also planned during this phase:

• Documentation review
• Research enterprise operations “walk-through”
• Development of a request for proposal (RFP) for the purchase of a third-party electronic Research Administrations (eRA) software application

Phase I of Project Wahoo is estimated to last approximately six months. Phase II, the selection of an eRA vendor and Phase III, the implementation of the PeopleSoft Grants Post Award Module are slated to begin in March 2017, along with optimizations of currently existing PeopleSoft Contracts and Financials Modules.