We are in the process of completing a cost study for a highly technical computing center where the fee structure would include facilities usage.  The fee structure would be one that would be used to recoup actual costs for running the facility.  Faculty, staff and students would use the facility.

Some of our federally-funded grant projects have plans to use the facility.  I would welcome approaches that other institutions have used in creating their fee structure and cost study that would be acceptable under A-21, A-110, A-133.  If you would also be willing to share a copy of your facility funding model, cost study and/or fee schedule, that would also be very helpful.

We have contacted another institution with a similar setup and they use an fte approach:
Take the annual cost of running the facility and divide it by the number of users.
Their costs do include some administrative costs (e.g., IT personnel solely assigned to facility, network/computer maintenance)
(They started with a use-based model that became cumbersome and expensive to track)

If you have been able to incorporate administrative costs into your fee, I would be curious to find out the method used that would allow us to include this expense separate from the institutional f&a.

One additional piece of info: our proposed facility would start out being subsidized by the university and not completely self-funded-- although that would be the goal over time.

Any suggestions in how to approach this, what we should keep in mind, etc. would be welcomed.

Feel free to respond to me directly:  xxxxxx@ucdenver.edu

Thanks for your time,
JoAnn Porter
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Financial Compliance
University of Colorado Denver
(303) 556-2120

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