Does fEC have to be calculated for all projects?
Yes – the full economic cost of all research projects should be established. The only exceptions are for funders / schemes which do not pay fEC (where fEC is explicitly ineligible) and the funding limit is £15k or less. These will frequently be travel or equipment grants. However, the full economic cost is not necessarily the same as the price charged for a project, and in exceptional cases a School or College may take the view that an application should go ahead for less than the full economic cost. In such cases, fEC costing is still essential to establish the extent of any subsidy towards the project, and it must be absolutely clear before the application is submitted how any funding gap is to be filled.
