Full Economic Costing (fEC)Costing of staff time

General guidance 

The General Principle to be adopted is that costs for any staff who have been/or will be employed to work directly on a Research project should be directly charged to the project and included under the heading of Directly Incurred.

Academic staff who are already employed by the University should be entered as Directly Allocated (as the University has not chosen to adopt the policy of keeping timesheets for Academic staff).

Technicians can be treated in a number of ways - please refer to the Guidance below. Note that all Science and Engineering departments should at least include a charge for pool General technical support.

Other Support Staff (for example, department secretarial and administration staff) who are already employed by the University will have been included in the calculation of the Indirect Rate for the University and should not, therefore, be separately charged separately to funders who fund on a percentage fEC basis.

Technicians

Types of Technician:

  1. Technician employed in any department to work directly on a project - fixed contract (Contract)
  2. Technician employed generally in Science and Engineering departments - can be identified and recharged in whole or part to Research project(s) (Established)
  3. Technician employed generally in Science and Engineering departments - providing general technical support to Research projects (General Technical Support - Lab)
    For example: Stores, Safety, Chief Technician/Superintendent, Waste Disposal, IT Support, General Maintenance
  4. Technician employed generally in non-Science and Engineering departments
Types of technician
TypeCategoryInclusion in Je-SInclusion in costing formNotes
1 Directly incurred Yes, under staff costs Yes, under staff costs as Contract Salary costs will be charged directly to the project.
2A Directly incurred Yes, under staff costs Yes, under staff costs Although this is allowable under fEC, timesheets must be kept for these staff and their salary chargeability changed. This is not the recommended approach.
2B Directly allocated Yes, other directly allocated costs, shared staff costs Yes, under staff costs Salary costs will be recharged to the project quarterly on basis of fEC Application.  Je-S requires justification for this resource.
3 Directly allocated Yes, other directly allocated costs, shared staff costs Will be calculated automatically Estimated costs will be recharged to project on a £ per FTE (full time equivalent) rate. The justification of resources (JoR) should read: "In addition, we seek a £x contribution to general infrastructure support". 
4 Not applicable No No Costs will have been included in the calculation of the Estates rate.

Notes

Where a Technician's salary would not normally be recharged to a research project, this cost would have been included in the calculation of the Estates charge for the rates used from September 2005 to January 2006.

However, in calculating the Estates rates to be used from February 2006, the costs for Technicians in Science and Engineering departments have been stripped out of the Estates rate (and therefore the Estates rate for these departments has reduced).

From February 2006, these costs should be charged directly to the project in one of two ways:

  • Directly Allocated - Under Shared Staff Costs - where the technician can be identified as working specifically on the project for a proportion of their time (i.e. technician will be named). The costs will be recharged from the established staff account to the contract quarterly based on the cost approved in the fEC application
  • Directly Allocated - Under Shared Staff Costs - where general technician support will be provided which cannot be related to a particular member of staff (i.e. technician cannot be named) a charge out rate should be used to allocate an appropriate part of these staff costs. The rate to be used from Feb 06 is £3,042 per Academic/Research FTE on the project. Note that only certain categories of staff are included in the FTE total (i.e. Academic and Research staff only).

All Science and Engineering projects should include at least a charge for General Technical Support.

Note that for non Science or Engineering departments technician's costs, which would not normally be charged direct to a research project, will continue to be included in the Estates rate and should therefore not be separately identified.

If staff costs are included as part of an access or usage charge for research facilities, they should not be entered under staffing headings as well.