FW: Important Information RE: UC Lab Fees Res Program- 2018 UC-NL CRT Award Structure and Funding for C&G officers

Dear Colleagues:

We are forwarding important information and guidance below that pertains to applications for the 2018 UC-National Laboratory Multicampus Collaborative Research and Training awards. The applications for this program have a submission deadline of Thursday, July 27^th 12:00pmPST.

The guidance provides clarification on proposal submission and budget structure among other things. If you are assisting with the preparation of an application to this program, we recommend that you and your faculty/researchers read the guidance in its entirety.

For questions related to this guidance, please contact the Senior Contract and Grant Officer assigned to your department.

Nancy Lewis

Executive Director, Sponsored Projects

 

Sponsored Projects Administration

UCI Office of Research

141 Innovation, Suite 250

Irvine, CA  92697-7600

PH:  (949) 824-2897

Fax: (949) 824-2094

E-mail: nrlewis@uci.edu

http://www.research.uci.edu/

Please contact Elle Gibson @ (949) 824-9818 or emgibson@uci.edu to coordinate meeting requests.

TO:    UC Contracts and Grants/Sponsored Projects Offices

          UC National Laboratory Strategic Partnership Offices (SPO/WFO)

RE:    Guidance on Award Structure for 2018 UC-National Laboratory Multicampus Collaborative Research and Training Awards (UC-NL CRT) due Thursday, July 27, 2017:

Dear Colleagues:

The purpose of this email is to clarify the contracting and funding flow-through structure of the 2018 UC-NL Collaborative Research and Training Awards (UC-NL CRT).  This information is primarily directed to the UC campus C&G/SPO, but we are including information relevant to the national lab strategic partnership/WFO so that everyone has this shared guidance.  It information is consistent with the guidance provided last July 2016 for the UC-NL CRT award mechanism, and with the guidance provided in the RFP FAQs.

Award Structure:  The proposal is submitted by a host UC Campus (“host” or “submitting” campus).  The overall required structure of the collaboration includes a minimum of 4 UC campuses and at least one of either LANL or LLNL), and allows, in addition, the collaboration of additional UC campuses and all 3 UC National Labs (LLNL, LANL, LBNL). Each project will submit one consolidated annual scientific progress report.  The submission of the scientific progress report will be coordinated by the submitting/host campus, and should include the contributions and outcomes made by all the collaborators (UC and national laboratory). 

Award Contracting and Budget Structure:  The UC host campus is responsible for overall award conduct and compliance. The UC host campus is also responsible for the fiscal reporting and management of the funds allocated to the collaborating UC campuses in accordance with the approved budget.  The national labs will receive a separate contract directly from our UC Lab Fees Research Program Office here at UCOP, and the UC national laboratories are not treated as subcontractors for fiscal purposes on the awards. This means that the UC submitting/host campus may not charge/include any indirect costs for subcontracting to the national lab. 

The application budget template is structured for each collaborating site to provide its project costs (to be charged to the grant) and indirect costs, as well as a place for the national labs to indicate their cost-sharing commitments.  The “roll-up” summary tab auto-populates with the entries from each site tab.  Please follow the instructions and allowable cost guidelines in the first 2 tabs of the spreadsheet in completing this budget template. (There are also separate templates for the budget and cost sharing justifications.)

Funds Distribution and Award Management:  Once the pre-funding requirements are met and any budget adjustments finalized for nominated projects, the designated host/submitting UC campus will receive the funds for all the UC campus collaborators, and will allocate (redistribute) the funds to each campus in accordance with the approved budget or project plan.  Approved budget adjustments between campuses (if any) that occur during the project execution will be managed by the submitting campus (that is, they will either adjust future allocations to each campus, or coordinate inter-campus re-allocations of already distributed funds, if needed.) Annual fiscal reporting on the project to our office will be submitted by the submitting/host campus, and will include information on the award line item expenditures and any carryforward balances at each UC campus site.  (For those of you who manage MRPI awards from our office as a host campus, this is the same distribution and reporting structure that we have for MRPI awards.) The funding transfers from our office to the UC host/submitting campuses will be made from us to the submitting/host campus via interlocation transfer (ILTF).  

Please note:  Since Lab Fees Research Program Awards pay the federally approved indirect cost rate (based on MTDC), and we understand that non-extramural funds management systems do not automatically track indirect costs, the campuses will have to manually track indirect costs in relation to actual incurred expenditures. 

With regard to the portions of the awards that will be paid to the UC National Labs:  The host UC campus will not subcontract to the national labs, nor receive and redistribute the funds for the national lab collaborators.  Our office (the Lab Fees Research Program, Research Grants Program Office at the UC Office of the President) will separately enter agreements with each lab for their portion of the approved award budgets.  We will follow the same contracting and payment processes we have had with each of the three labs as we have done in the past (and once the awards are identified we will communicate directly with each lab on the approved awards, award amounts, and agreements).  The national labs will separately submit their own annual fiscal reports (though we do request that the information is shared with the host campus/lead PI for each project as part of the overall coordination of project progress).  Moreover, the national labs are expected to report on and contribute to the consolidated annual scientific progress report for each project.  The submission of the scientific progress report is coordinated by the submitting/host campus, and should include the contributions and outcomes made by all the collaborators.

Please note the following implications for proposal submission and management: 

+ Collaborating campuses and national labs should provide the documentation, if any, required by the host campus at both the proposal and pre-funding stages (as well as subsequent reporting).  Since the funding success rate is expected to be less than 15% based on proposal pressure, host campuses may choose to defer collecting the bulk of documentation needed for UC-to-UC sub-agreements (MCA) until after the nomination of awards for funding is finalized.  At the proposal stage, the submitting/host UC campus should follow its own campus protocols for this relationship.   After the award is approved, the submitting/host UC campus will finalize the UC–to-UC sub-agreements (MCA) needed to support the collaboration. 

+ The UC campuses do not need to prepare to contract individually or separately with the national lab collaborators on the project.  Nor should the UC submitting/host campus charge/include any indirect costs for subcontracting to the national lab, as they will not be doing so for these awards.   Documentation required from the national labs should be consistent with the understanding that the national lab collaborators will not be subcontracted by the host UC campus.

+ Budget changes/re-allocations between the UC campuses and the national labs during the execution of the project will be more difficult to coordinate and require substantially more administrative work.  Therefore, such proposed changes, if any, will require a high level of justification and high bar for approval.  We ask the project teams to carefully plan all three years of the research activities (and their associated costs) to minimize any such requests during the project execution.

We hope this information is helpful to address the questions related to the award and reporting structure, and flow of funds, for these awards.  As noted above, it is our recommendation If you have any additional questions, please direct them to me or to Christopher.Spitzer@ucop.edu with a cc to RGPOGrants@UCOP.edu.  A copy of the RFP and detailed application instructions are available at our website (and through proposalCENTRAL):

http://ucop.edu/research-initiatives/programs/lab-fees/application-information.html

http://ucop.edu/research-initiatives/programs/lab-fees/files/2018_LabFees_ApplicationInstructions-CRT.pdf

Thank you, as always, for your collaboration and collegiality with regard to these important UC-National Laboratory Collaborations. We are pleased with the response to the new Lab Fees Research Program RFP, and look forward to receiving the applications in two weeks (Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:00 Noon Pacific Time).

With best wishes,

Kathleen

Kathleen Erwin, PhD

Director, UC Research Initiatives

UC National Laboratory Fees Research Program (LFRP)

Research Grants Program Office

University of California, Office of the President

300 Lakeside Drive, 6th Floor

Oakland, CA  94612

phone:  510/987-9889

visit us at: http://ucop.edu/research-initiatives/index.html