Finance Business Systems

Research Support - Costing and Pricing

Directly Allocated Costs

Pooled Technical Staff and Major Facilities

With effect from 1st February 2007 the salary cost of ‘Pooled Technicians’ within Laboratory Departments i.e. technical staff who are not appointed to work on a specific project, were no longer included within the Directly Allocated (DA) Estates Charge. These staff costs will still be treated as a DA cost, however, the Research Councils now require institutions to split the charge in the commentary supporting the research application between (a) direct effort on the project e.g. sample analysis and (b) general infrastructure support e.g. health & safety, laboratory equipment maintenance etc.
 
Therefore the following costing method must be applied for Laboratory Projects for the use of 'Pooled Technicians':-
 
i) Direct effort (a) - Principal Investigators will need to estimate the amount of time required from these staff as they do now for themselves and enter this time  in the Directly Allocated Staff Costs area on the costing spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will then automatically calculate this element of the cost based on a salary banding for Technical staff.

ii) General Infrastructure (b) – this second element of the charge will automatically be calculated by the spreadsheet on the same basis as the current Estates charge i.e. on a £ per academic/research staff FTE and will be identified separately.

iii) The two figures should then be added together for inclusion on the JES application form under other directly allocated costs (shared staff costs) with the split of (a) and (b) plus justification provided in the supporting commentary. For example, a £7k DA charge on a project might be justified by the following statement: "£2k for pool technician as part of the research infrastructure charged across all projects; plus £5k for a technician working for two hours per week on sample analysis - this is needed because..........."

Dedicated Technicians i.e. those who are appointed to work on a specific project will continue to be treated as a Directly Incurred cost and charged to the project on an actual basis.