F&A Frequently Asked Questions

Room type 255, Research Laboratory Service.

The space inventory occurs prior to the functionalization of the space during the space survey. During the inventory portion of the survey, the primary use codes of the space are checked for accuracy to ensure research space is accounted for and assigned to be surveyed. For example, if a space was converted to a research lab, it’s primary use code would need to be updated to reflect this change.

Room type describes the primary use of a room (e.g., classroom, computation dry lab, faculty office)   

https://maps.uw.edu/geosims/room-type-definitions.html 

Room function describes the activity taking place in the space (e.g., instruction, organized research, joint use) 

https://finance.uw.edu/maa/fa-rate-proposal/space-survey/functional-use-definitions 

Each room can have only one room type or primary use.  Each room can have multiple room functions. 

CAP (Capital Architecture + Planning) Account Managers, as noted on this website: https://facilities.uw.edu/planning/account-managers  

Primary use (room type) codes are important because those related to research will be the primary focus of the upcoming Space Survey and will require functionalization. (Currently planned for January to April 2023).

For all 255 rooms (research service labs):

• There is no need to add PI or occupants
• If there are old occupants in the space already, there is no need to delete them
• As well, it does not matter what % the PI% in Space Manager

For the base year, getting the rooms identified correctly as 255 is the main goal. 

Departments can clean up PI and occupants per their local practices.

Occupants are required for research space.  Specifically primary use/room types: 250 research labs, 261 computational labs, 262 BL2 wet labs and 264 specialized wet labs.  

Occupants do not need to be assigned to service or administrative areas.   

This step only required for those departments participating in the Space Survey.

• For Space Manager, vacant space should have no PI allocation and no occupants listed
• Within WebSpace, the PI should be marked as “Vacant” PI. 

This depends upon how your college decides to handle. For some, the Dean’s office would need to add or remove rooms from a department’s inventory.  For others, you may coordinate with your CAP Account Manager to add/remove space from your department room inventory. Discuss with your department to understand the process expected. 

Yes, leased space should be part of this space inventory activity.  This will help ensure accurate inventory records no matter how it is funded. 

Fully remote employees (100%) should be excluded from the survey and not listed as occupants in any space.  

Hybrid remote employees (<100%) should be assigned as occupant even if they are only in a day a week and treated as if they are on site.  

Primary use should be changed when 50% or more of the time can be attributable to sponsored research activities.  When changing the Primary Use from 310 to 261, please be sure to update the Occupants as well.  

Rooms below 50% sponsored research activity should remain with office designation and will be functionalized based on department’s salary and wages (joint use); occupants do not need to be updated. 

Those definitions can be found on these websites: https://finance.uw.edu/maa/primary-use. 

and https://maps.uw.edu/geosims/room-type-definitions.html (along with Excel file download). 

The room type should be coded as 300s if funded more than 50% from gifts and endowments.  

255 if the server or room housing data and/or backup systems is being used for organized research.  

710, 711 or 715, if being utilized for more general IT-hosted applications. 

This is only required for departments participating in the Space Survey:

The occupant's employee ID (EID) or name should be assigned to the research related space. This data will be imported into WebSpace for the Space Survey which will occur January to April 2023.  

If <50% of their time is spent in the office on sponsored research, the room type should be coded as 312. 

Typically, the amount of time spent on administrative activity by the chair would make it a 312 unless they have separate office space where their research activities take place away from their leadership responsibilities.  

They should be listed as an occupant in each lab/space they occupied during the fiscal year (7/1/2022-6/30/2023), wherever they are doing rotation work for a reasonable length of time (e.g., one quarter or pay period).

Shared Space is defined in one of two ways: 

1. Research lab shared by multiple PIs/multiple departments (room types 250, 260, 261, 262, 264) .  Occupants need to be assigned  

2. Service rooms with shared equipment/instrument/cold/freezer/microscope (room type 255).  Occupants do not need to be assigned  

No, as Space Manager only allows UW employees to be added as occupants. 

However, unpaid volunteers will need to be added in WebSpace for the survey functionalization so identifying them during the inventory process will be helpful.

Yes, if before 11/30/22 in Space Manager. 

Updates to the space inventory information can be made in WebSpace beginning in January 2023.

This step is only required for those deparments participating in the Space Survey:

Yes, include research staff as an occupant in all the research related spaces they occupy.

If the employee is paid primarily by start-up funds or department research, the room type should be administrative (e.g., 312, 316). 

But if they are paid by NIH or grant sponsored, the room type should be assigned as research (e.g., 261).

This is only required for those departments participating in the Space Survey:

Space Manager will allow you to assign a person from another department as a room occupant using their EID or name.  

The faculty/staff’s time working at a hospital should not be included as part of the % of time reported for the individual when surveying a research lab.  The hospital space is not a part of the F&A Rate calculation for the UW. As a result, any individual who spends time at the hospital or other non-UW facility should not have 100% of time reported in the research lab.  

1. Research grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements sponsored by the Federal government and Non-Federal agencies and organizations (e.g., states, cities, foundations, corporations, etc.). 

2. University funded research separately budgeted and accounted for on a specific project basis (e.g., Royalty Research Funds). 

3. Sponsored research training of individuals in research techniques (or research training). 

4. Federally sponsored clinical trials.   Note, Non-federally funded (or industry funded) clinical trials are considered Other Sponsored Activity (OSA). 

5. Research cost sharing related to organized research projects and included on effort reports. 

Instruction (as part of Instruction & Departmental Research), as receiving course credit for their time and not being paid from a research grant.

WebSpace will be updated on a recurring basis during the Space Survey (January-April 2023).  The new project/budget should be available within that time-frame so that the space can reflect latest project/budget activities. 

The WebSpace cluster feature allows you to save time by grouping rooms with a single PI and the same list of occupants. This can be used for a suite of labs even if some labs are located on different floors or in different buildings. The step can only be performed once the related rooms are inventoried. More detailed information on clustering can be found in the WebSpace training guide located in the help section of WebSpace.

If the Unpaid Volunteers spent any significant amount of time in research rooms, then need to be added as occupants using Add Manually option in WebSpace. The same process applies to undergraduate students, high school students, graduate students, visitors or agency employees.

If unpaid, only represent FTE that you can confirm with high-confidence level.  If paid, be careful not to lose sight of instruction when trying to assess the type of work being performed.

Recharge/service center space in WebSpace will be automatically surveyed based on the billing information associated with the center. For example, the percentage of the total revenue that is associated with external sales will be applied to Other Institutional Activities. To mark a center as recharge center space within WebSpace, select the recharge box from the edit page during the inventory step and select the Recharge/Service Center from the reason drop down. The associated recharge budget will also need to be entered to calculate billing percentages.

If a person does not have a UW EID (Employee ID), use the Add Manually option in WebSpace to reflect the individual as an occupant. 

They should be listed in each lab occupied during the year, wherever they are doing rotation work for a reasonable length of time (e.g., quarter or pay period).  

The same way as space occupied by outside persons and paid by external entities or organizations (e.g., external researchers).  If they have an UWID, you will be able to search for their name and add them as an occupant, however, since they are not paid by UW their activity will automatically be defaulted to Other Institutional Activity (OIA).

The lab should be split by amount of recharge and amount of research.  This can be done by allocating % by room based on use of space usage (E.g., # workbenches, # hours/days of week).

Visitors

No, a PI should only be listed as an occupant, when performing work in that space. A PI should not be listed as an occupant if providing management and/or project oversight only.  

The space survey is used to determine the Facilities portion (“F”) part of our F&A rate.  Administrative (“A”) related rates are capped by the Federal government at 26%, while the Facilities rates are not.

No.  This is because an individual may spend time in room(s) not related to research (or part of the Space Survey), which would leave them with a % of total time less than 100% in WebSpace.

All of the space occupied by the department should be functionalized regardless of how long a department occupied a given space.   

If a space is occupied by different occupants during the year, space functionalization should take into consideration use of all occupants during the base year.  The current owner/assignee should coordinate with all prior occupants of the space.   

Adjust % of time by room to add up to 100%.  Federal guidance limits a person to 1.0 FTE; the 100% of time aligns to 1.0 FTE

Full Year Vacancy: Space should be functionalized as Vacant only if it is currently vacant or under renovation and expected to be vacant for the full 12 months of Fiscal Year 2023 (7/1/22-6/30/23).   

Partial Year Vacancy:   If space was occupied for part of FY 2023, that space should be functionalized according to how the space was used when occupied.  

UW spaces used for Organized Research (OR) need to allocate related F&A costs, which drives the need for specific site (South Lake Union-SLU, Applied Physics Lab-APL)  and (OFFR) Off Campus Research designations.  These separate ways to capture F&A data are important but sometimes complex.  If you have further questions, please contact FAHelp@uw.edu.

255 Service Rooms will be functionalized using the weighted average of the activities of the rooms they support – an automated calculation performed within WebSpace. Recharge centers will be functionalized based on their billing information – using data available in WebSpace.

This may occur but in a minority of the SLU space.  If there are questions as to budget funding, the department should follow-up with the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP).

Instruction 

Please contact FAHelp@uw.edu for further guidance and assistance.

Departmental research includes research, development, and scholarly activities that are not separately budgeted and accounted for (e.g., bridge, start-up funding). Departmental research is funded from budgets that are not restricted to a specific project.  Space used to conduct departmental research should be functionalized as departmental research as part of the Instruction & Departmental Research function (IDR).  

Organized research projects required a proposal or other application to obtain funding, have a defined scope of work associated with the project, anticipate a "deliverable" result, and require that periodic financial and progress reports be submitted to the sponsor.  Space used to conduct organized research should be functionalized as organized research (OR). 

The MAA F&A team used Space Manager as of November 30th, 2022.  Department updates through that date will be reflected in WebSpace.

WebSpace is a web-based space survey tool developed by Maximus that will be the system of record for the space survey a part of the 2023 F&A rate proposal.   

WebSpace can be accessed using the following url: https://webspace.maximus.com/uw/ with your UW NetID.  Ensure you requested access to the system and attended the training. 

Each department can have up to 5 individuals with the department administrator role. In addition, rooms can be selected and assigned to anyone with a UW NetID. This can be useful to assign suites of labs to a lab manager or program coordinator who is more familiar with the space.

The UW has complex approaches to budgeting and resource allocations. For indirect funds, however, the Provost’s current distribution policy (see OPB FAQ #2. What revenue is distributed by ABB?) is to allocate 65% of the funds to centrally fund facilities, compliance and administrative functions and 35% to schools and colleges, who then decide how much flows to departments/units or individual faculty.

If the faculty member’s college, school or department has a policy to return RCR funds to faculty, the funds may be used to further support faculty research and/or other scholarly activities, including costs associated with sponsored proposal preparation. Fund use is flexible provided they are used in accordance with University and/or State rules and school/department guidelines.

Indirect cost reimbursement includes partial recovery of, among other things, the cost of proposal preparation, as well as activities such as building maintenance, the cost of utilities, security, hazardous waste disposal, telecommunications, libraries, cost of office supplies and copies for sponsored projects, departmental and college administrative support, purchasing, payroll, human resources, central sponsored program operations and compliance support offices and other infrastructure costs necessary for supporting sponsored awards.

The UW does not recover all the indirect costs that support research and other sponsored activity for a number of reasons, including Federal government caps on administrative costs related to faculty administrative effort, including proposal preparation, and an overall cap on total institutional administrative costs within both academic units as well as central administrative units. Another significant impact on the recovery of indirect costs involves sponsors and certain sponsored agreements that do not reimburse at the full negotiated indirect cost rate. These sponsors and agreements fairly consistently result in an under-recovery of indirect costs of approximately 25%.

WebSpace has been updated with Space Manager data, as of November 30, 2022.  Any updates made in Space Manager changes after November 30, 2022, will also need to be made in WebSpace.   

Yes, information can be updated in WebSpace until the data has been reviewed and approved by MAA and closed for any further updates.

Yes, any room currently coded with room type 590 Unassigned, in on-campus leased spaces need to be updated to a more appropriate room type in WebSpace. A list of all room types will be available in WebSpace and can also be downloaded here - https://maps.uw.edu/geosims/room-type-definitions.html. Off-campus leased spaces will not impact the F&A Rate and do not need to be updated in WebSpace. 

Recharge or service centers will be identified by marking the box within “Recharge” column during Inventory, via the Edit Room process. The survey of these rooms will be done based on billings related to this Recharge/Service Center.

If the mail room is not managed by a specific department, the mail room should be assigned to 208020800 Creative Communication.

If shared space has been identified in Space Manager, it will be reflected in WebSpace in the following format: <room_number>^<sequence number>.  Additional shared space can be designated using the Edit Room process in WebSpace.  Rooms can be shared across multiple departments and /or PIs.  

Room Type 360 Breakroom

As part of the WebSpace inventory process, departments will need to review the room type (also referred to as a primary use code) to ensure it reflects the primary use of the space correctly. The assignable square footage (ASF) should also be reviewed for accuracy and updated as needed. Some room types will require all the occupants identified that used the space during Fiscal Year 2023 to serve as the basis for completing the survey.  

Room Type 090 Parking Garage

Yes, If there is a PI or a Lab Manager (Primary Occupant) is assigned to the research room.  If no one is assigned to supervise the lab, leave the PI designation blank.  If the cluster concept applies to a group of labs, a PI or a Primary Occupant will need to be designated.  

110 General Classroom

If the new department is known, use the Edit Room process in WebSpace to reassign the room by selecting the new department from the list. If the new department that uses the space is not known, use the Remove Room process in WebSpace to indicate that the room does not belong to your department. 

Send an email with the building and room that you are missing to FAHelp@uw.edu.  The F&A team will try to locate the requested room and assign to your department, if found.  Additional information may be needed.

A space survey is the process of determining what percentage of campus space is used for organized research. This includes determining in which rooms organized research occurs, assigning budget numbers and occupants, and calculating the amount of time spent on major University functions such as organized research and instruction. The results of the space survey are used to help allocate costs within the Facilities and Administrative (F&A) rate development process.