Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidTrap
Might be something to buff up the value of a grant proposal, only to be replaced with something for a fraction of the cost when the reduced grant comes through???
DT |
The thing is that the grant money is not paid to the academic(s) but to the administering institution and then the academic has to put in a purchase request. It is possible to vary slightly how a grant is spent but changing one of the large items would require considerable justification. Also reports have to be sent back to the ARC on how the money was spent and also what results have come from the equipment (not the data - papers, PhD completions etc). If you misspend or under-perform you won't get any more ARC money.
As an example of what can be done, when I was working there was a grant to add an input device to an existing mass spectrometer. Included in that was money to upgrade the backing pumps in the MS from rotary oil pumps to dry scroll pumps. But before the upgrade happened one of the turbo pumps pooped its bearings so we applied to not do the backing pump upgrade and instead spend the money on a new turbo. That was OK. But if we had wanted to not buy the Kiel device and instead get the cheaper gas-bench I believe we would have had issues. I don't know what would have happened because I've never seen anyone try a trick like that.