Make the most of space audits to boost F&A return rate

Many universities struggle with space optimization, despite its importance to recovering facilities and administrative (F&A ) costs. With smart space accounting practices, chief research officers can better capture the full scope of research across campus and boost negotiated F&A rates.

This starts with enhancing the institution’s space survey, which is critical to F&A for four reasons:

• The facilities portion of F&A is uncapped
• Facilities pools have the biggest impact on overall F&A rate
• The space survey is the main driver of four of the five facilities pools
• Accurate space accounting is critical for F&A rate growth

Yet, many institutions struggle to effectively execute on space surveys since they require collaboration and coordination across units. Leaders also have difficulty ensuring consistent methodology across units. And conducting a space survey is a time consuming and expensive process that depends heavily on accurate and accessible data. Failing to accurately account for research space and uses, however, can lead to underrecovery of F&A.

It is therefore critical that leaders adequately plan and prepare for their space survey, using these 10 critical components as a guide.