|
*Proposals in response to the Arctic Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (ArcSEES) Solicitation (12-553) are due to NSF 14 September, 2012. To obtain a proposal estimate from CPS in time for this deadline, send us your complete support request no later than 17 August, 2012.
* Proposals in response to the Arctic Research Opportunities Program Announcement (10-597) are due to NSF 18 October, 2012. To obtain a proposal estimate from CPS in time for this deadline, send us your complete support request no later than 21 September, 2012.
Click here for the CPS Proposal Assistance Checklist (updated 6/19/2012)
The Arctic Research Support and Logistics Program (RSL) pays for the arctic field support (logistics) costs of National Science Foundation/Office of Polar Programs (OPP) - funded researchers. On occasion, RSL also pays for the arctic logistics costs of NSF proposals funded outside OPP. RSL provides this support either directly to the researcher’s grant or via a third-party provider such as CH2M Hill Polar Services (CPS), the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group (IDDO), or UNAVCO. RSL engages these third-party providers through NSF subcontracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. In many cases using one of the third-party providers reduces the overall logistics costs to a proposal due to resource sharing and economies of scale.
When you submit a proposal to the NSF that includes fieldwork, you must include a logistics description in the timeline/work plan section. If you plan to pay for field logistics through your grant you must also include the year-by-year costs in your budget and detail the costs in your budget justification. If you would like the assistance of a third-party provider, do not include these costs as a budget line item. Instead, identify your plans clearly and realistically in the logistics description, include statements in your budget justification signaling your intent to request third-party logistics provider support, and obtain a support letter and budget estimate from the provider to include as a supplementary document to your proposal. If your proposal is awarded, this rough order of magnitude estimate will form the basis of the approved logistics support scope, and researchers who request logistics support/funds beyond the scope of that identified in their funded proposal will be required to justify changes to their Program Officer before any additional support or funding is approved. For this reason it’s important to clearly identify all anticipated support requirements at the proposal stage.
To assist researchers in planning their fieldwork and developing an accurate logistics description, CPS offers a checklist. Please consider the support elements included in the checklist when preparing your logistics plan. If you plan to use CPS as your logistics provider, we will work with you to develop a support letter and budget estimate for inclusion in your proposal. Depending on the complexity of the proposed fieldwork and the volume of requests CPS receives, it may take between four to six weeks to develop an estimate. For that reason we ask that you provide a complete description of your proposed fieldwork (including any appropriate elements identified in the checklist) to the CPS Science Planning Manager at least four weeks before the proposal deadline. We reserve the right to turn down proposal assistance requests received after the four-week cutoff due to work-load constraints.
For more information about proposal assistance, or regarding the services offered in the checklist, please email the CPS Science Planning Manager. For an overview and starting point for developing a logistics plan, also visit the Arctic Research Support and Logistics Program.
|