Part IV - Charge-out rates

Section E: Estate charges

Chapter E.4 Alternative methods

1. The focus of the above chapters was on a method of allocating estates using two estates charges each expressed as a £ per academic/research staff. This is acceptable for TRAC.
2. Institutions can alternatively use different methods to attribute estates costs to research projects, as long as they are at least as robust as the £ per academic method. Alternatives include the following:

Modifying the £ per academic charges

• calculating and applying a third estates charge for clinical departments. This method may be useful when a clinical department has a different profile of working from that in laboratory departments (with academics perhaps spending more time on Research). Even if the space per academic is the same as in other departments, if the academics are doing more work on Research, the FTE count for Research will be higher and the estates charge that could be calculated will be lower;

  However, institutions should take care that all of the direct Research time in a clinical department is for activity that could potentially appear on project costing forms or is institution-/own-research, or for PGR activity. This may not be the case with all O(CS) recharges;

• weighting the estates charges for different types of staff or grade of staff. This method could be used to distinguish between equipment/technician-heavy projects (which might mean more space is needed) and those with less technical staff or little equipment;
• identifying other management units, or campuses, where either productivity is different, or the estates cost structures are different, and calculating separate charges for these areas. If this is done, institutions should be careful that the calculations are all made in the same way, and the total estates costs and FTE numbers used in the calculations aggregate to institutional totals;
• calculating a separate estates charge for each department. Institutions will anyway have charged all estates costs to departments or management units; and then split these between Teaching, Research and Other. If FTE numbers (staff and students) on Research are sufficiently robust at the level of department, then a separate rate for each department could be calculated and applied;
• identifying a department charge and separately, a Faculty charge, per FTE (e.g. for Faculty space);
• using more than four types of space (e.g. recognising studios, workshops, fieldwork separately) in the original attribution of space costs to T, R and O;
• excluding all IT, or all equipment, and measuring and charging these as a directly allocated cost.

Project-specific methods

• charging projects with the space actually likely to be used or assigned to the project, (including a share of departmental Support space) over the life of the project. A square metre cost would be applied, appropriate for that type of space. The charge-out rate (£ per sq metre per day) would take into account the use of this space by all activities and all projects;
• charging for space on a cost per square metre per day basis (as above), plus a charge per academic/research staff FTE for Support space in academic departments;
• applying a standard charge per square metre for each different size and type of activity or project.

3. Some of these alternative methods mean that estates charges are being set at a lower level than that of the laboratory/non-laboratory groups of departments, e.g. at the level of department, or grade of staff. If this is the case, then institutions should ensure that the annual time allocation processes will provide robust data to inform the FTE counts at this lower level.
4. These methods should recognise the use of space on institution-/own-funded Research, and by PGR students. These should be informed by robust analysis of the space required for each activity and by each type of user. If these project-specific methods lead to the space allocated to a PGR student representing less than 0.8 of that for a Research Assistant in a laboratory department, or less than 0.5 of that for a Research Assistant in a non-laboratory department, then the institution should be prepared to justify this to their PGR funders.
5. Institutions can change their methods over time, but estates charges can only be set once a year (1 February).
6. Institutions should also be prepared to benchmark their estates figures on a common basis, irrespective of the type of estates charge that they actually use. Benchmarking is part of the external quality assurance process.
7. It will be done on the basis of:
   • two estates charges, laboratory and non-laboratory, expressed as a £ per academic/researcher. Clinical charges may be collected as well (if used by institutions). If more estates charges than this are being used by an institution, these should be aggregated into the laboratory and non-laboratory charges;
   • the £ per sq metre for each of the four (or more) categories of space. (This data may not be available until the end of 2007, as it only needs to be implemented by 1 August 2007.)