CRC Bids

WaterRA has a proud history of supporting the research goals of our members through targeted participation in Commonwealth-funded research initiatives, such as Cooperative Research Centres. CRCs offer significant leveraging of investment and provide a unique opportunity to link industry with research to drive knowledge growth and accelerate innovation in the water sector.

The AusIndustry Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program, delivered through the Australian Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, supports industry, research and the community through grants that provide funding for collaborations to solve industry identified problems.

  • CRC Grants – support medium to long term industry-led collaborative research, for up to 10 years.
  • CRC Projects (CRC-P) grants – support short term, industry-led collaborative research, for up to 3 years.

The CRC Program aims to:

  • Improve the competitiveness, productivity and sustainability of Australian industries
  • Foster high quality research to solve industry-identified problems
  • Encourage and facilitate SME participation in collaborative research

Find out more about the program here.

 

WaterRA offers various levels of service to our members for the different CRC bids, depending on the funding that can be achieved. This means that our members can participate in several CRCs through WaterRA, hence having more influence on the programs and benefit from interim outcomes more readily.

Types of CRC opportunities and WaterRA’s role:

Primary opportunity

WaterRA will act as the water industry consortium lead for a specific CRC. This is contingent on WaterRA receiving enough collective funding from our members, which will be used to elevate WaterRA to a Tier 1 or 2 participant and hence represent our members at that status. While different CRCs expect different annual contributions for those tiers, a Tier 1 or 2 status generally requires an annual contribution ranging from $100,000 to $250,000. As a Tier 1 or 2 participant, we will be influential at the program design and execution stages, representing the water industry’s research needs by ‘sitting at the table’ throughout the entirety of the CRC. All primary opportunity CRC consortia moving to Stage 2 can contribute to ‘path to impact’ statements; WaterRA will work on these and share with and vet through our interested industry members.

Secondary opportunity

If a CRC receives only some interest from our industry members and the collective funding does not reach the Tier 1 or 2 level, WaterRA can work with the interested members to decide what type of participation is desired. Our secondary offers can range from an engagement and knowledge sharing role in a CRC or student programs to a focused role on one particular research area or program which is of interest to those members.

Active bids

WaterRA currently has no active CRC bids. Please check this page in the future for news regarding any new developments.

For further information on CRC opportunities, please contact Vincent Bianchini, WaterRA Research Manager