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Maintainers -ImageDr. Fabrizio Finozzi

Rates

This is a controlled document

In line with Open Energy Transition regulatory obligations, changes to Controlled documents must be approved and merged by a code maintainer. All contributions are welcome and encouraged.

  1. For non-commercial projects (NGOs, governments, EU Horizon proposals, etc.), we use a base non-commercial rate. This rate covers our average direct and indirect costs, including overheads. If overheads are specified separately on your proposal, subtract these from the base non-commercial rate. E.g., for Horizon proposals, 25% overheads are typically specified. If this is the case, use 75% of the base non-commercial rate as direct cost.

  2. For commercial projects, we use commercial rates. These depend on the location of the client, as willingness to pay and competition levels vary.

  3. Rates are adjusted to inflation and changing personnel costs annually; the latest rates can be found on Google Drive.

  4. These rates are indicative. We may, at times, want to offer projects below cost, if there are substantial non-monetary benefits to OET (e.g., new partnerships with important stakeholders, highly visible impact, development of one of our tools, etc.). However, we cannot do this for all projects, so must careful consider, across Departments, for which projects we want to do this. If you would like to submit a proposal or quotation with rates lower rates, please follow the following steps:

  • Write an e-mail indicating your proposed rates, the total budget for the project, people involved, and timeline of the project (start and end dates, indication of when most of the work will take place) and the reason for wanting to offer a lower rate. Please allow enough time for this to be discussed, and send your e-mail as early as possible but no later than one week before the proposal or quotation is due.
  • Send this e-mail to the finance manager, the Head of Research and Market Development, and your Head of Department.
  • The finance manager checks if there is financial headroom to offer a lower rate. If the response is that there is none, you choose whether to stop the proposal process, or go ahead with the standard rate.
  • If there is financial headroom, the Head of Research and Market Development, and your Head of Department will discuss your proposal with the other Heads of Department and, if necessary, the CEO. Even if there is financial headroom, offering one project below cost will limit OET’s ability to offer other projects below cost, so a high-level decision is still necessary.
  • our Head of Department will communicate the results of this discussion to you.
  1. OET rates are higher than those at some other organizations, particularly research organizations. This is because our costs are higher: we employ an above-average share of senior modelers and software engineers, many of which have PhDs and many years of experience contributing to open-source code, and many of which live in Europe. We compete in the labor market with commercial software developers, compared to whom our rates are below average. We also only exceptionally have PhD students or trainees, so, unlike universities, cannot use these to reduce average costs. We do believe we offer value for money. When questioned about rates, feel free to redirect these questions to the Head of Research and Market Development.