• Question: how much money have you spent on a project?

    Asked by 786artk46 to Rumman, Petros, Peppe, Greg, Fran, Pooja on 10 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by 854artk46.
    • Photo: Petros Papapanagiotou

      Petros Papapanagiotou answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      Research projects can have different costs. A small project of a few months can be around £50000. Some of the larger projects I have worked in involve many people for 1-3 years and may cost even more than 2 million pounds in total. Of course, I only spend a very small portion of that myself. The money needs to cover the salaries of all the people involved, some money for travelling, the University support, equipment, and other things.

    • Photo: Giuseppe Cotugno

      Giuseppe Cotugno answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      The cost of projects is extremely variable within companies and what is the thing you have to do. The person who manages the money of a project is called “project manager”. He is a person with a business background or a senior engineer who got tired of making things and prefers directing other engineers and making plans to be sure everything happens as agreed with a client or his boss. As such, I can’t tell you exactly how much we are spending but I think it can be a lot: electronic components, professional software (one licence can cost even more than 1200$ for some of those), little things that break (wires, plugs and other) and the biggest of the costs: people’s salaries. When I was a researcher, I had more access to the budgets and the most I’ve seen is 100k pounds. I doubt companies spend less than that but some smaller project (a little change or some test on a new technology) might spend less than that.

    • Photo: Fran Zuch

      Fran Zuch answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      Uuh, that is very much dependant on the companies I worked for. Some, it feels, just have millions just laying around others are a bit more sensible 🙂
      My current situation is different because we are building a new company and you naturally spend a lot more money because you have to pay lawyers and other important people. And then you have to pay companies that you want to use, they usually want a bit of money upfront (I am looking forward to the time when we can do that to other people)

    • Photo: Greg Chance

      Greg Chance answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      Some projects have only cost a few hundred pounds. Some projects, working in bigger groups has cost millions.

Comments