Space Inventory and Space Survey Project - Overview and Status

F&A Rate Proposal 

Facilities and Administrative (F&A) costs at the University of Washington (UW) are like overhead costs for a business and are essential to operations. These costs account for things like maintenance, utilities, and administrative functions (such as payroll or purchasing) and are sometimes referred to as indirect costs or F&A Research Cost Recovery (RCR) budgets. Because it is impractical to itemize F&A Costs for sponsored projects, the UW uses a percentage calculation to account for these costs with sponsors. This calculation, known as an F&A Rate, is established in accordance with the Uniform Guidance for Federal Awards. 

The UW proposes and negotiates the F&A Rate with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Cost Allocation Services Division (CAS) at least once every 4-10 years. The proposal is calculated using data from an F&A Base Year, which represents actual operating expenditures at the UW for an entire Fiscal Year. The last F&A Rate was established using Fiscal Year 2013 (FY13); the new rate must be calculated and then negotiated based on data from Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23), which runs from July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023.  

Once approved by CAS, the F&A Rate determines how much the UW recovers for indirect costs from sponsored projects. This is an important process and a significant revenue stream, with substantial impact for the University—in FY22, the UW received $307 million in F&A recoveries. For more information, refer to F&A Rates and Costs | Management Accounting & Analysis.  

Space Inventory and Space Survey Project 

The first step in the F&A Rate calculation process is to ensure that all university space is reviewed and updated (Space Inventory) and research space associated with the largest research departments is surveyed (Space Survey). The Space Inventory and Space Survey provide data on departmental research spaces and account for those who occupy them. This is a critical component of the F&A Rate Proposal—the results determine how most facility costs (depreciation, interest, operations, and maintenance) are allocated to sponsored projects. 

Due to the magnitude of research funding and space at the UW, this is a major body of work, which requires significant time and input from departments across campus. Although the timing of this project is not ideal due to Finance Transformation (FT), the Management Accounting and Analysis (MAA) F&A Team is doing their best to manage this work amid this larger organizational change by creating several distinct initiatives and timing them to minimize conflicts with FT milestones. 

Project Initiatives 

Click the links to learn more about each of the following initiatives: 

• InVision Space Manager Inventory Initiative for Departments Participating in the Space Survey (October 2022 – November 2022) 

• InVision Space Manager Inventory Update for Departments NOT Participating in the Space Survey. (October 2022 – June 2023) 

• WebSpace Training Prep – User Roles and Registration (Due: December 16, 2022) 

• WebSpace Data Validation and Review (December 15, 2022 - January 9, 2023) 

• WebSpace Training (January 2023) 

• WebSpace Inventory and Survey Updates (January 2023 – April 2023) 

• Department Data Reviews and Updates (May 2023 – Fall 2023) 

Project Accomplishments to Date 

InVision Space Manager Inventory Initiative for Space Survey 

Statistics

This 9-week initiative, which wrapped up on 11/30/22, was a campus-wide effort with significant contributions from participating department team members, Facilities’ Business Intelligence Team (BIT), Campus Architecture and Planning (CAP) team, and Engineering Services group, School of Medicine (SoM), and MAA.  

The below snapshot reflects some impressive statistics, which resulted from this extraordinary collaboration:  

• Participation:
  • 70 departments from 11 schools/colleges.
  • 124 Space Manager users.
• Assignable Square Feet (ASF):
  • 221,500 additional square feet was identified as research space in November 2022. This represents a 10% increase.
• Room Updates:
  • 9,736 rooms were updated by participating departments since September 1, 2022. This accounts for 11% of all UW space.
  • 951 rooms were assigned a primary use in November 2022, which were previously not classified.

Tasks 

While the campus portion of this first initiative is complete, it was a substantial amount of work, which included the following activities in the InVision Space Manager: 

Task	Responsibility	Status
Review the rooms assigned to the department; confirm the floorplan, rooms, and room numbers are accurate; update information, as needed; provide user access and training for Space Manager.	CAP Account Managers/BIT/Engineering Services/Departments	Complete
Update the occupancy for the department’s research space—assign Principal Investigators (PIs) and other occupants to research rooms, including computational labs and research offices.	CAP Account Managers/BIT/Engineering Services/Departments	Complete
Integrate and validate space and financial data from InVision Space Manager to WebSpace for the Space Survey and F&A Rate development.	MAA F&A Team	In Progress