TRAC Committee

The TRAC process has oversight from the TRAC Committee with the return subsequently signed off by the President each year. The TRAC Committee at Imperial is academic led with members including: The Chair Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise), academics from within Faculties and other senior leaders. The Committee normally meets three times a year – twice to review the TRAC results (in November and December) prior to its submission in January and once in spring to review the benchmarking data against the sector.‌

The Committee would welcome any new academics expressing an interest in joining, contact vpr@imperial.ac.uk for more information.

TRAC in the sector

History of TRAC

TRAC was introduced in 2000 by the Joint Costing and Steering Group (JCPSG), who formed a few years earlier, to help guide Universities in their decision-making policies by implementing good practise in pricing and costing activities. In 2004, Full Economic Costing (FEC) was introduced. FEC is an approach to costing a research project on a full cost basis. This extended TRAC to include a few cost drivers that included indirect costs – thus aiming to recover the full overhead cost of research activities.

From more information on the history, please follow the link here: TRAC history

For TRAC guidance:  TRAC guidance

TRAC Development Group (TDG)

TDG’s purpose is to embed the principles of TRAC throughout the UK HE sector and ensure that TRAC and any associated methodologies are fit for use by funding bodies and by institutions. They periodically publish bulletins with the latest updates on the group’s work. All bulletins can be found here: TDG bulletins