[Finance Business Systems

Research Support - Costing and Pricing

Directly Allocated Costs

Estates Charge

The other element relating to Directly Allocated costs is the Estates charge. This calculation can be made by multiplying the FTE (or proportion of an FTE as described above) by the appropriate Estates rate. Estate rates fall into two categories 1) Laboratory Based or 2) Generic or Non Laboratory based.

When applying an estates charge to academic and/or research staff time in a Laboratory Department where the project is desk based, then non-laboratory estates charge should be applied.

Up until 01/08/2006 Estates rates were not charged to a research project where all of the work is taking place off-campus.  This has changed.  Now, if an individual works offsite for six months or more in aggregate during a project then no estates rate should be applied for that period of time, for the rest of the project an estates rate should be applied.  For projects with a duration of six months and under no estates charge should be made if the project is wholly off-campus, if there is some work on-campus then an estates charge should be applied for all of the project.

Eligible staff that can be included in the FTE count for the calculation of the Estates and Indirect Costs include all directly incurred and directly allocated academic and research staff.  Technicians and admin staff are not included in the FTE count for the purpose of calculating the estates charge.

Again an example may help – assume the following

Directly Incurred Staff

1 x RA4 – Full time
1 x RF9 – Full time
1 x Grade 3 Administrator
 

Directly Allocated Staff

1 x Principlal Investigator – 220 hours per week
1 x Co-investigator – 2 weeks per year

therefore the calculation is:-

The two researchers = 2 FTEs (note administrator & technician are NOT eligible)
The Principal Investigator = 220/1650= 0.14 FTE
The Co-Investigator = 2/44=0.05 FTE
The Administrator = 0  (not included in the estates charge)
Therefore total eligible FTE for the Estates Charge is 2+0.14+0.05=2.19FTEs pa

The FTE figure is multiplied by the number of years (or part years) of the proposal. Therefore using the above figures a 2 year proposal would equate to 4.38FTEs; 3 year proposal would equate to 6.57 FTEs and so on.

The Estates element of the Directly Allocated costs can now be obtained by multiplying the FTE by the appropriate Estates rate The current Estates rates can be accessed by clicking on the following link:-

http://imp.uwe.ac.uk/imp_public/displayEntry.asp?URN=1754&rp=listEntry.asp