Calculating the cost
A minimum of ten working days prior to the Funder’s deadline you should contact the Funding Advisors for assistance with calculating the cost of the work in your proposal and submit a Costing Request Form (internal staff and students only) to fundingadvisoryservice@plymouth.ac.uk. Any requests received with less notice will require an accompanying email from the relevant Head of School confirming that there are unavoidable “extenuating circumstances”. Any request for a costing that do not meet this deadline and do not have Head of School confirmation, will not be costed.
The team will work with you to ensure that everything has been costed appropriately and in accordance with University of Plymouth Full Economic Costing (fEC) rates and the University's finance regulations and procedures. University staff can visit the Finance SharePoint site for further information.
The Funding Advisors will prepare a costing for you on Award Manager that summarises all of the costs and specifies the proportion that will be funded externally and any shortfall that must be funded internally. For instance, the research councils only pay 80% of the fEC in most cases.
Institutional approval from Head of School and Dean is required for all external research funding applications; this is completed through Award Manager. Projects with a value of greater than £2 million (fEC) require additional sign-off by the Office of the Vice Chancellor (OVC). The Funding Advisors and Research Funding Managers will arrange this for you. Please allow at least a week following all other approvals for the OVC sign-off to be completed.