Equipment management is an important function at UCI because the university must:
Report expenditures for equipment to federal, state, and private funding agencies
Record the inventory value, including depreciation, of equipment located at UCI
Make records of equipment transactions available to UCI's auditing agencies
Defining Equipment
The University defines equipment as an article of tangible personal property that is:
Non-expendable
Stands alone
Has a normal useful life of one year or more
And has an acquisition cost of $5,000 or more
Defining Fabrication of Equipment
The item for construction should meet the following conditions:
Has an estimated cost of $5,000 or more
Is free-standing and moveable
Be built in-house, i.e., not by a non-UC entity
Upon completion, item will be placed into service for one year or longer and will remain at UC
UC will retain title and finished product will be a one-of-a-kind item
Not be available on open market
Parts will be purchased from multiple vendors and/or via multiple purchase orders
Labor represents at least 20% of cost
A fabrication is a piece of equipment, as defined above, which has been physically constructed by university activity and is expected to be used by the University upon completion. It is not a product resulting from a simple assembly or connecting of various parts, and it is not a deliverable. The costs of components used in the fabrication process and the costs of purchased services directly related to the fabrication of equipment are exempt from indirect costs. During the construction process, the types of expenditures allowed include materials, supplies, and services purchased from outside vendors and recharges from authorized internal recharge activities such as machine, glass, electronic, and other types of campus shops involved in the design and/or construction of the item. Departmental labor, travel, and other departmental operating expenses associated with the fabrication will not be recorded as fabrication costs. As with equipment in general, the title to fabricated equipment vests in UCI unless otherwise stated in the award.
Fabricated Equipment - Procedures for Reporting and Recording Reach out to Michelle Mendez (mkm@apep.uci.edu) for help with this process. The steps for requesting a new fabrication property number are below. Please note that you will need to complete the Steps for submitting a purchase request in addition to the steps below.
Departments anticipating construction of an item of inventorial equipment should submit an Equipment Inventory Modification Request (EIMR) form to Equipment Management. This request should include a complete description of the item, its location, the custodial department, the account and fund number of the fund source, the anticipated completion date, and an estimated total cost of the finished item.
The UCI Equipment Manager will review the request, verify that the item is an allowable expenditure under the fund source, assign a university property number, and return an approved copy of the EIMR to the department, along with a University property decal to be affixed to the item when it is sufficiently developed to do so.
Requesting a New Fabrication Property Number
PI must complete the fabrication justification form
