Annual Subaward Statement of Work and Budgets

The Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics (IRIS-HEP) is managed as a single project with 18 participating institutions. Funds will be released to subaward institutions through an annual Statement of Work (SOW) process which will define institutional budgets, tasks and deliverables for the specific (upcoming) one year time period. For example Year 1 of the IRIS-HEP project is from 1 September, 2018 through 31 August, 2019.

This annual process requires several steps and documents:

1. A budget proposal and justification: this is produced by the subaward PI (and grant admin) and will be iterated between the subaward PI and the overall project PI.
2. A description of task and deliverables - this is produced by the IRIS-HEP executive board and will be discussed (and iterated) between the subaward PI, the IRIS-HEP executive board and the IRIS-HEP team.
3. A Statement of Work (SOW) - this will be produced by Princeton. It specifies the final tasks and deliverables, as well as the budget, for the specified year. Only when this is completed and signed by the subaward PI and the Princeton PI will funds be released.

Some iteration between steps 1 and 2 will likely be required based on available funds, the discussions described above, as well as interactions with the project Steering Board and Advisory Board.

This combined multi-step process is what is meant by the “annual budget and SOW process”.

Dates for IRIS-HEP annual budget and SOW process for Year 7 (2024 - 2025), covering the period from 1 September, 2024, through 31 August, 2025.

Preparation of budget and budget justifications

As part of the annual SOW process, each institution should produce a one year budget and budget justification. This should be described in a single document, which will be submitted as a pdf. This will likely differ from that submitted with the original/renewal IRIS-HEP proposals for the following reasons:

• current salaries, fringe and indirect cost rates should be used
• specific names for personnel to receive salary should be included when known (and “TBN” otherwise).
• evolution due to available funds, project goals, updates to tasks & deliverables by and successful delivery in previous years

Please prepare a standard budget sheet as in an NSF proposal (i.e. the “Form 1030”, your grant admin may need to make a temporary proposal in Fastlane/Research.gov to do this) covering the 1 year budget. Submitting a 1-year Form 1030 budget is required.

In addition you should write a budget justification which contains the information normally expected from an NSF proposal budget justification. The budget described should however be limited to funds required for a single year and the defined time period, which should be noted explicitly in the justification. For example, “IRIS-HEP Year 7: 1 September, 2024 - 31 August, 2025” or similar should appear near the top of the document.

In addition to the standard budget justification information, additional information should be added to facilitate the mapping of costs to the Work Breakdown Schedule (WBS) categories required by NSF as part of the project accounting. These extra elements are (a) the WBS cost breakdown table and (b) a summary of costs at the end.

Note that in the budget justification it is only necessary to refer to work to be performed in terms of the WBS categories (see below). It is not necessary to describe specific tasks and/or deliverables within those WBS areas. These will be negotiated separately and will appear in the final SOW document.

Again, please submit a single pdf document, not multiple files. The first part of the pdf file should be the 1030-style budget sheet and the second part should be the budget justification including the extra WBS cost breakdown table specified below.

WBS cost breakdown table

After the standard budget justification information, the document should include an additional table which provides information as in the following example:

General Notes:

• On-campus indirect costs of 58% are included
• Fringe rates vary by job category as noted above
• Grad student tuition of $1234 is included, no indirect cost is charged

Some notes on this:

• Specify fringe and indirect cost values used in the Notes column or in a general list of “General Notes” after the table.
• The “12-month fully loaded salary” is the equivalent annual salary cost, including the fringe and indirect costs, it is not the actual salary or the specific cost to IRIS-HEP.
• For special “add-on” cost cases such as grad student tuition, or the “per head computing fees” sometimes charged by universities, please include that extra cost (fully loaded, including indirect costs) for each relevant person in the “Extra Cost” column. Make a note about how it was calculated in the “General Notes” and/or specific person “Notes”.
• The cost to the IRIS-HEP project will be calculated by multiplying the “12-month fully loaded salary” by the IRIS-HEP fraction, and adding the extra cost.
• Note any known start or end dates of personnel in the individual “Notes”
• Include also any Travel or M&S budget as rows in the table as “Extra Costs”, again including indirect costs, along with an estimate of how it breaks down by WBS area. The details of the cost should be described outside of the table in the preceding “standard” budget justification.
• For graduate students, please specify an FTE fraction relative to a standard graduate student working for 12 months a year. You should not include the usual weight that grad students “research fraction” is usually weighted as half of the calendar-month time that they work.

The labels to use for the WBS areas are:

• WBS1: Management (MGMT)
• WBS2: Analysis Systems (AS)
• WBS3: Data Organization, Management and Access (DOMA)
• WBS4: Innovative Algorithms (IA)
• WBS5: Software Sustainability Core (SSC)
• WBS6: Scalable Systems Laboratory (SSL)
• WBS7: OSG-LHC Services (OSG-LHC)

Summary of Costs

Please include also a line at the very end of the document which specifies the total net sum of all budget costs. This number is the total budget being requested.