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Managing Re-Charge Centers and Research Service Facilities: An Introduction

Jun 9th, 10 / 0 Comments /

Recently, Jim Wrenn, President and CEO of IT Works and Rebecca Vandall, Director of New Program Development and Strategic Partnerships at SRA International, held a seminar entitled Managing Re-charge Centers and Research Service Facilities. The next several blog posts will cover material which was outlined during the seminar.

Purpose of Seminar:

To identify and monitor facility costs
To identify problems that undermine standard business practices (such as inconsistent billing practices, delinquent payments, and inaccurate financial reports) and explain how to handle them.
To develop and implement scheduling, billing, and collection systems for the facility.
To design consolidated profit/loss and other financial statements to aid in the management of the facility.

Who is This Seminar For?

All levels of research administration professionals in research intensive institutions
Administrators in basic science departments
Specialized research labs and centers (i.e. cancer centers, marine biology labs & genome science institutes)

Re-Charge Centers Defined:

Also known as “Charge Back Centers; Cost Centers; Service Centers; and Research Service Facilities, Recharge Centers are defined as organizational units that provide goods and services to investigators and other users within the research community. Users are primarily other university operational units and secondarily external users. Services are often highly specialized and involve the use of capital equipment specifically designed for a particular research purpose. Some examples of Re-Charge Centers include the following:

NMR Scanners
Immunohisochemistry
Transgenic Mice
Confocal Microscope
And others

Uses for Re-Charge Centers

In addition to providing goods and services to investigators, a recharge center charges users for its goods and services and is frequently housed within a university department. Because recharge centers are usually funded by a combination of funds stemming from such places as infrastructure grants, and revenue collected from the services provided, the management of these facilities requires administrators to implement business practices that cover the following in order to ensure the successful operation of the facility: