The Industrial Research Assistance Program, or IRAP, is a government grant that we’ve obtained for a large number of clients. Research and development are essential for many businesses, but finding the funds to get a project off the ground right away can be a challenge.
IRAP works with more than 8,000 small and medium-sized businesses in Canada each year, offering companies access to grants for product and process development projects. IRAP supports small, medium, and large projects, providing a subsidy to help you pay for salaries and contractors.
The first step is to see if your business qualifies for IRAP support. To qualify, your company needs to answer ‘yes’ to the following questions:
- Are you a Canadian enterprise that is incorporated and profit-oriented?
- Do you have fewer than 500 full-time employees?
- Are you aiming to grow and generate profits through the development of new or improved products, services, or processes in Canada?
Successful IRAP projects are required to show they meet these four criteria:
- A Technical Challenge: You’re solving a technical problem. For example, you’re developing a new product or making complex modifications to a current product
- A Business Opportunity: The proposed solution in your project gives your company a competitive advantage in your market
- Risks: This project sees your company take on technical and financial risks
- Objectives: You need clear and measurable objectives
Applying for IRAP support is time consuming and detail oriented. It requires describing your project to an IRAP industrial technology adviser, then creating a project description with objectives, milestones and key performance indicators. You’ll need to develop a project budget that shows calculations accounting for other forms of government support, revenue and employment growth projections and market research. Lastly there are required project summaries and detailed descriptions of work done to date.
As a business owner, your time is both limited and valuable, and putting this information together is going to take you weeks, or months.
Or, you can call SJE Consulting, and here’s what we will do:
- Set a meeting with the IRAP industrial technology adviser and be your advocate during the entire process
- Create the budget and figure out the revenue and employment growth projections
- Prepare all written descriptions, including summaries of completed work, work to be accomplished, and how your project factors into the current marketplace
- Complete the online application
- Take care of all the monthly reporting and the final report.
We can help you move your business to the next level with IRAP support. Don’t take our word for it, here’s what our clients are saying:
“Using SJE Consulting’s knowledge and access to grant programs we’ve received grants for growth, automation, and IT implementation, often several grants in the same year. SJE Consulting gathers information from us and gets the grants for us, with no disruption to our day-to-day activities. I highly recommend SJE Consulting to any business.”
Karl, President of Schenk Architectual Imports
What do you have to do?
Call us and let’s talk. We’re experts at turning conversations into successful grant applications.
