Re: Contracting Issue Greg & Peg Schmidt 18 Dec 2003 11:29 EST

Jackie:

When I was a CO in private industry, we were faced with a similar
situation.  Our case had us performing services on short notice of an
indefinate period and with unknowable equipment and material
requirements.  We had rate sheets that we charged for labor, materials,
equipment useage, etc.  This rate sheet changed every 6 months.

What I did was create a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) with all of the
terms and conditions in there.  It had a beginning date but no endind
date.  For the costs of the items used and hours consumed by the client,
we used the "then current rate sheet" which allowed me to change the
rate sheets without having to renegotiate all of those BOA's.  The
contract was activated by a telephone call, fax, email, etc.  We sent
the client an estimate prior to starting as a practice.  Often the
client would have us do additional work, so the guesstimates were
quickly blown.  All clients with BOAs received the latest rate sheet in
the mail and were instructed that this was to be used on any work
performed effective whenever the effective date of the rate sheet was.

The rate sheet was set up by certain levels of personnel (PI, PD, PM,
Investigator, etc) with fully loaded rates (inclusive of benes,
overhead, and profit).  There could be several persons within each
level, so we took the average, for the class and loaded the result.  We
could then charge that out for as many hours, days, or weeks as we
needed to.

Worked just fine for all of us.

Greg Schmidt

Jackie Givens wrote:

>Colleagues . . . would appreciate any advise you might give me on this
>scenario:
>
>We have a Conflict Resolution Center on campus.  Faculty frequently are
>requested to facilitate conflict resolution sessions with a variety of
>entities . . .state, government, schools, etc., in addition to
>conducting training sessions.  It is pretty standard stuff to develop a
>contract with one of these entities for training, with a beginning and
>end date . . . for a certain number of hours.  We are having difficulty,
>however, in determining whether we could draw up some kind of contract
>for those times when faculty are called up to facilitate sessions . . .
>I am told that in this field, faculty would generally bill at an hourly
>rate, for as long as it takes to bring issues to resolution.  That
>period is not known from the outset.  Sometimes sessions might drag on
>for weeks, or months, or years.  With that in mind . . . does anyone
>have any suggested language that could be used in a contract that would
>list an hourly rate for services, but with no specific ending date.  The
>faculty could just consult on the side, but they are interested in
>bringing these kinds of contracts into the Conflict Resolution Center to
>gain recognition for the Center, and to be able to bring in some
>indirects to fund the Center.  Appreciate your thoughts.  Jackie
>
>Jacqueline Givens
>Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
>Kennesaw State University
>1000 Chastain Road, #0111
>Kennesaw, Georgia 30144-5591
>PHONE:  (770) 423-6036
>FAX:  (770) 499-3620
>WEBSITE:  http://www.kennesaw.edu/osp
>
>
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