Kris -

For me, I have science crews heading into the Arctic or off to remote
sites that can only be reached by ship or plane. We use Iridium phones
because that's the only way we can guarantee them having some semblance
of contact with the rest of the world in the case of an emergency. Good
thing too - one of the teams didn't bring enough food this last season
and we had to arrange a supply shipment to avoid a Donner Party
incident!

Anyway - with the Iridium phones, we directly allocate those costs to
the project, as we wouldn't be using them if the project didn't exist.

We do the same thing with some cell phones - if we end up getting it
specifically for a project, and it's only used for a project, than it is
a project cost. We also have instruments remotely placed that we can
only get the data transmitted via cell phone - so it is blatantly a
project specific cost. Frequently I'm sending people out into the middle
of nowhere, so it's a safety issue. Which is what you are saying.

High-end administrators have cell phones provided by the university, but
their charges are F&A pool costs. We differentiate pools by the program
type the costs are charged against.

To my mind - if you aren't doing this outreach as a regular activity,
and the only reason you have the cell phone is because of the outreach,
then you can justify it as a directly related cost, and charge it to the
program.

Good luck!

Tania

--
 Accountability and accounting are not the same thing

Tania H. Clucas, CRA                      mailto:xxxxxx@sfos.uaf.edu
Sponsored Programs Manager                       Voice 907.474.6736
School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences           Fax   907.474.7204
University of Alaska Fairbanks         http://www.sfos.uaf.edu:8000

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