Federal, Foundation and Industry-funded Projects
For newly funded or ongoing funded projects with a prior BAC budget, the investigator should contact the BAC manager via email or phone. Newly funded or ongoing funded projects without a prior BAC budget have several options for obtaining BAC support. The three options are: 1) a short-term consultation, 2) a fixed-percent effort and 3) a task-based (fixed price) contract. These options can be accessed by submitting a Collaboration Request Form. Selecting the best option for you is primarily based on the amount of work, timeline and investigator preferences.
Short-term consultations are best for short, well-defined questions with relatively small datasets; charges are made per hour, based on the numbers of hours spent on the project. Most grant- or contract-funded projects do not include such tasks; however, sometimes there are pilot studies, interim analyses or small tasks nested within the larger study that the BAC can easily support.
Fixed-percent effort can be provided to support relatively larger or even smaller, long-term studies. The BAC can make staff available for a fixed percent of time. For example, 20% effort would provide support for roughly 1 day/week or 4-5 days/month. This arrangement requires that the PI take responsibility for consistently using the available time because the costs for percent effort are charged on a monthly basis with the assumption that the effort is being utilized. Upward or downward adjustments in effort can be made quarterly at the investigator's request as needed.
A task-based (fixed price) budget can be developed in collaboration with the BAC budget manager or director. This is the approach most likely to be useful for most grants or contracts, as it guarantees the task will be done, with a priori knowledge of the costs. This type of budgeting ensures the accomplishment of specific tasks for a given budget, regardless of the actual time it takes to complete the analyses. With the given scope of work, the BAC takes responsibility for completing a pre-specified set of tasks. Changes can be made to the project scope with corresponding changes to the budget. The reverse, making changes first to the budget and adjusting project scope, is also an option.
