2.4 Estimating indirect costs
Indirect costs are costs that support an employee and are paid by the institution by which they are employed. These costs are in addition to the salary and on-costs paid to the employee and include laboratory and office space, electricity, building maintenance, cleaning, and so on.
At The University of Western Australia, a formula is available to calculate these costs by means of using a "multiplier" for high laboratory-based schools, medium laboratory-based schools, and low laboratory-based schools. The following multipliers are used when estimating professional (academic) staff time only (because the multiplier includes provision for general/administrative support):
- medium-cost school – 114%
In this university, to calculate the indirect costs, the total amount for professional staff shown for salaries and on-costs should be multiplied by the appropriate multiplier and entered under the relevant column (University or Other). In the case of an ARC grant, nothing would be entered under the ARC column as it does not pay for laboratory and office space, electricity, and the like.
You can see that the costings can get quite complex. It is important to access your expert advisers to gain advice as to web-tools and principles as early as possible in your grant preparation.
Example 1 below illustrates how indirect costs might be represented.
Modules