Consulting Services Example

The sections below are the components that need to be inserted into a proposal requesting $16,640 for consulting services. Note that the facilities document should be provided as supplementary material.

Project Description

Insert the text below at an appropriate place in the project description section of your proposal editing as needed to fit your project. You will need to modify the description of what a Research Computing staff member is expected to accomplish during the time budgeted in the proposal. The example describes an effort to install and tune the open-source software used by the project and to work with the researchers as a consultant on some changes that are needed to support the project.

The open-source software <NAME> will be used as the basis for the proposed research. However, as has been explained above, we will need to modify module <NAME> with our novel algorithm <NAME>. The calculations to be performed with the software are very compute and data intensive and we intend to run these calculations on UF Research Computing resources. We have budgeted a hardware acquisition to get guaranteed and sustained access to 20 compute cores with the ability to run large parallel jobs of short duration of 1 hour using up to 200 cores a few times per week. To make sure that the software, which is known to be complex, performs optimally we include Research Computing staff support in our budget during year one. UF Research Computing staff will install and tune the software. The Research Computing staff member will also act as a consultant during the project years two and three to ensure that the modifications made to module <NAME> continue to perform optimally.

Budget Item

You can add as senior personnel a particular individual in Research Computing in your proposal, or you can add software consulting services at the hourly rate of $65 per hour. The first choice often requires that you supply a short CV of the named individual, the second choice does not. The cost for staff support is subsidized by the University. Therefore, you should enter a fraction of an FTE at the hourly rate of $65 per hour in the budget. Note that the $65 hourly rate for consulting services is subject to change, so you should consult the current pricelist for accurate amounts.

A three-month (13 weeks) support requirement at 16 hours per week corresponds to an allocation of 0.10 FTE at a cost of

(3 months)x(4.33 weeks/month)x(16 hours/week)x($65/hour)=$13,510

It is also possible to allocate 4 hours per week for all 12 months in the year of the project, which also corresponds to 0.10 FTE at the same cost.

(12 months)x(4.33 weeks/month)x(4 hours/week)x($65/hour)=$13,510

These calculations include fringe benefits. They do not include overhead.

This rate for support is a standard rate and does not correspond to the actual salary of any Research Computing staff member and is subsidized by the University.

Budget Justification

Insert the text below in the budget justification.

During year one we include three months of Research Computing staff support or 0.10 FTE at $13,510 (including benefits) for initial installation and tuning of software <NAME>.

During project years two and three, we include 60 hours of Research Computing staff support at $3,000 (including benefits) to act as a consultant for the development and implementation of a new algorithm <NAME> in module <NAME> of software <NAME>.