SQUARE (System for Quality Assurance in Research and Higher Education) will set up the basis for the Euro-Thai partner universities to secure sustainability and to establish Quality Centres of Excellence in their regions and to enhance and strenghten their collaboration.

In continuation of SQUARE entrepreneurship opportunities between the EU and Thailand will be identified and links to other institutions and agencies will be established. In addition, a link to EU companies working in Thailand will be established in order to provide financing and on-going help with local Thai businesses.

Moreover, the large student body trained as a result of this exchange will be able to continue and further enhance this work. They will help build active research and business networks, especially via trained students, to encourage co-operation between Thailand and the EU. This multiplier effect will secure sustainabilty after the completion of the action and lead to better economic and business opportunities with EU countries.

SQUARE will establish a biannual workshop to exchange and update the partners’ knowledge. It is anticipated that the workshop will become self-financing after the funding period. The project will rely on a long term joint PhD co-supervision programme between the partners (long term collaboration agreement already exist since years between Lyon 2 university and both Sannio and CMU universities). In the longer term, joint MSc courses will be developed between the partners using e-learning platforms and possible video conferences, SQUARE should be viewed as the first phase in the development of a sustainable EU-Thai link consortium. The project will carry on by securing additional funds from industry, and national public research councils such as the CNR in Italy; the ANR (French Agence Nationale de la Recherche) research agency and the MIRA Rhône-Alps program in France; the ERASMUS-MUNDUS exchange program and FP7 program in EU.

In terms of risk, the environmental, political, economic and social issues are seemingly standing positive.  Especially in Thailand, there have been constantly more interest on the issue and have been tackled seriously both public and private organization. In addition, Quality and Supply Chain Management Systems for Thailand are being raised as the national urgent issue and being supported rather well.

From the technical perspective, the potential risk of not finding responsible and qualified persons (competency issue) in SQUARE universities has been considered and suitable key persons have already been identified, and constant contact is currently being maintained with them. Most of these individuals have been already involved in collaborative projects and some of them have already long-term relationship.The monitoring and evaluation of the output must be conducted consistently.