Costing Plan to Manage the University of St Andrews Bioinformatics Unit
Contact: [email protected]

The current running costs of the Bioinformatics Unit are represented mainly by a bioinformatician’s time (currently Ramon Fallon, primarily funded through a Wellcome Trust ISSF) and hardware. To keep the facility sustainable, we implement a sustainability charge for the hardware and costing towards the bioinformatician’s salary. The sustainability charge includes storage space, but we will review the system as we approach full storage capacity. For disproportionately large projects, we may also discuss higher sustainability charges or new equipment purchases, on an individual basis.

Costing system for internal users (affiliated to St Andrews)
– Hardware. We apply a sustainability-charge system, which applies for both funded and unfunded projects. Exploratory, light or occasional use, with only minor requirement for resources (storage, RAM and/or CPU time), will be covered by a fee of £500/year/group. For research projects with a bioinformatics, ‘omics or next-generation sequencing component we will apply a sustainability charge of £1500/year/group for the duration of the project. PIs that have already contributed to the hardware funds will be exempt proportionally to the initial contribution. (Exceptionally, under certain circumstances exemptions to the sustainability charge may be permitted. If you may have justification for an exemption, please discuss this with the Unit.)
– Bioinformatics support. Externally-funded projects will be guaranteed the proportion of bioinformatician’s time that the Unit agreed to allocate to the project (in advance of your submitting your funding application). Unfunded projects will also be considered, where feasible and within reason. We will keep track of projects to estimate time spent helping each group.

For prospective use (costing for grants):

• Please discuss your requirements with the Unit, before submitting your funding application.
• Then, complete the Bioinformatics Unit Grant Submission form, available at:
  https://bioinformatics.st-andrews.ac.uk/contact
• Submit this form internally, as outlined within the form document.
• We will require PIs planning to use the Bioinformatics Unit to cost it in the following way:
  • Hardware. Sustainability charge of £1.500/year/project for the duration of the project, depending on the policy of the body you are applying to (please discuss with the Unit in advance).
  • Bioinformatics support. We will apply a three-tier system. When the bioinformatician will be directly involved in the data analysis the costing should match 20% of the post-holder time for the duration of the project (estimating to work on up to 5 projects at a time). When the bioinformatician is expected to provide support to other researchers, costing should match 10% of the post-holder time. For bioinformatics research projects, that will require only minimal assistance (software installation/upgrade, user account management), the costing should match 5% of the post-holder time. Exceptionally, other percentages are permitted (please discuss with the Unit in advance).

Each group using the facility will be asked to sign a collaboration agreement.

Costing system for external users (other universities, research institutes and industry)
Please contact the Unit to discuss your requirements.