SCGC-FIRST Costing Guidelines for Departments’ Finance Office
Please reference this document for the SCGC-FIRST
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1. Overview of Award
MPLS Division and SCG Chemicals Public Co., Ltd (SCGC) are delighted to announce the launch of the annual SCGC Fund for Innovation and Research in Sustainability and Technology (SCGC-FIRST). The fund aims to support visionary and imaginative open innovation relevant to global challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
As one of the innovative chemical companies in the world, SCGC take a special responsibility here to tackle the greatest challenges of our time, because innovations based on chemistry are key to solve these problems.
To this end, SCGC has made an initial commitment of £1 million for the creation of the SCGC-FIRST. The fund will run over four years and support applications from across the University. Successful projects could be invited to request substantial follow-on funding directly from SCGC.
2. Costing the Proposal
All proposed investigators need to have approval from their respective Head of Department.
Proposed Research Assistant, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Administrator or Programme Manager can be named in both the proposal and X5 if necessary.
X5 actions
All proposals must be accompanied by a proposed budget prepared using X5, with the budget details output onto the X5 Admin output (AO). In addition the MPLS Division requires written evidence of departmental approval by the Head of Department for each individual costing (so this must be obtained for all the departments involved in an internal collaboration).
- A trial costing should be created in X5, using the funder SCGC- FIRST (short name SCGC-F) and the Generic scheme.
- Inflation will be included in the costing.
- Collaborative costings should be created if costs are going to be incurred in more than one department. The lead department is responsible for adding in the non-lead departments on the project setup screen.
- Please note that as trial costings do not get submitted into X5 workflow, no system emails will be generated notifying the non-lead departments that costings have been created for them. Instead the lead department should email the costing creators concerned (names and email addresses can be found X5 - list of departmental costing creators).
- Non-lead departments can find their costings by selecting Drafts ‘by my department’ on the costing dashboard.
- On collaborative costings the lead will be able to see the combined project costs by going to the Department toggle in their costing and selecting ‘All departments’
- The AO should be generated for each costing. For collaborative costings this should be done by the lead. Guidance on running the report can be found at X5 admin output.
Awards will be made only for the directly incurred (DIC) costs of research: funds may be provided for consumables, student stipends, salaries, small equipment items (computer purchases would need a clear justification), software, spectroscopic and analytical services. The following will not be supported by the funds available: building costs, the salary of the Principal Investigator, new academic posts, honoraria, or travel to conferences. Any unspent balances at the end of the grant period should be returned to the fund.
For clarity, the following costs are allowable:
Directly Incurred costs (DIC) (staff and non-staff):
- salaries of postdoctoral researchers (full- or part-time)
- consumables
- minor equipment (equipment with a value of £10,000 or more would require clear justification)
Directly Allocated costs (DAC)
- estates costs
Not Allowed:
- student stipends
- overhead costs
- DA infrastructure technicians
- Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator’s time
- honoraria
- travel to conferences
Proposals and Costings DO NOT have to be submitted to Research Services. Research Services have agreed this is not necessary.
Any unspent balances at the end of the grant period should be returned to the fund.