Support for your application
On this page you will find information on costing and pricing research projects, including an overview of Full Economic Costing (FEC), which is an approach to calculating the total costs to the University of sustainably undertaking all activities associated with a research project.
You will also find a link to the University of Glasgow's Project Costing Request form. This form captures all of the information your Project Coordinator will require in order to set up a project on our internal system and generate any required costings.
FEC overview and principles
Full Economic Costing (FEC) is an approach to calculating the total costs to the University of sustainably undertaking all activities associated with a research project or research activity. FEC is used by all higher education institutions in the UK and is mandatory for external research funding. FEC is dervied from The Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) which was introduced by the UK government following the Transparency Review (1998).
FEC total costs include:
- direct and indirect costs
- space/estates charges including depreciation
- recurring investment in infrastructure.
Determining project costs
In order to arrive at a full economic cost, it is necessary to:
- identify all of the resources required
- calculate the Full Economic Cost (FEC) of a project (irrespective of what the funder will pay for).
The full time equivalent (FTE) is the amount of time an employee works as a percentage of standard full time. For FEC purposes, a standard full-time year comprises 1650 hours (44 weeks of 37.5 hours). The project FTE determines the cost of the estates, infrastructure technicians and indirect costs at project level.
- All research staff (either directly incurred or directly allocated) are counted within the project FTE. Where a researcher may not attract a salary cost their time will still count towards the project FTE so they should be included in the costing.
- Technical and management, professional admin (MPA) staff do not generate estates, infrastructure or indirect costs and so should not be included in the costing.
More information
Visit the University of Glasgow's Full Economic Costing guide.
Project Costing Request form
Academics applying for external funding, predominantly relating to research, must complete the Project Costing Request form. We update this form from time to time, so please download the form each time you want to submit a project costing request to ensure you are using the latest version.
The form is designed to capture all of the information your Project Coordinator will require in order to set up a project on our internal system and generate any required costings.
Please read the 'Instruction' tab before completing the form. At a minimum each blue tab should be completed, however, you may also need to complete some of the peach coloured tabs if they are relevant to the project.
Contact your Project Coordinator directly or submit an enquiry via the College of Science and Engineering's Research Support Service.