There is a cost recovery system in place in ECE Department to collect funds from research faculty in ECE, covering part of the cost of staff salaries for Research Computing Services not covered in the department budget directly. In addition, some funds cover infrastructure maintenance and upgrades and some shared software licenses.

The cost recovery program is implemented by the ECE Department; the ECE Computer Systems User Committee advises the Chair on policies and rates. Rates are usually updated each year in the late spring; modest increases are typically required to cover contractual annual salary increases and salary grid step progression. Members of the Computer Systems User Committee are listed on ECE's internal website under "Faculty Administrative Roles"

The ECE Research Computing Services group is a group of administrative staff who provide computer and networking support within the ECE department. This group operates the “ECEHELP” support facility for research computing users, providing support services from networking to system administration, software installation, license management, and PC, software and network troubleshooting.

The RCS group is partially funded from the department budget and the balance is paid on a cost recovery basis through a monthly billing applied to ECE research faculty members.

Billable service items include provision of user logins on ECE's Tier 1 Linux network; ethernet network access for PCs on ECE's Tier 1 or Tier 2 wired network; and a minimum per-user fee for all research supervisees, called the “tier 3 user fee,” for any supervisee not already incurring a fee for a login or networked PC assigned to that user.

Research supervisees covered by RCS services and fees include:

• supervised graduate students in ECE MASc and PhD programs;
• postdoctoral fellows;
• research associates;
• research lab technicians;
• volunteers;
• casuals (in research-related roles); and
• visiting professors, visiting researchers, and visiting graduate students being hosted by the faculty member.

There are no tier 3 user fees or login account fees for undergraduate students whom the faculty member is supervising for summer research projects, design projects, or course-related software use. (A faculty member's networked computers still incur a Tier 1 or Tier 2 network connection fee even while assigned to an undergraduate user.)

Once a month on or around the 16th of the month, Research Computing Services calculates the monthly charges for the current month for each faculty member subject to charges. An email is sent to all faculty listing the total for the current month for all professors. In addition, detailed statements for all billed professors are posted on the ECE internal website. Access to the internal site is password protected, and is restricted to current faculty and staff only.

The ECE department office processes each monthly statement shortly after it is issued, debiting funds from the FIS account that each professor has designated.

This cost recovery billing applies to all faculty with a primary Graduate Faculty Membership (GFM) appointment in ECE. It does not apply to teaching stream faculty, sessional, stipend, or visiting faculty members. Visiting professors are not billed; rather they are counted among the (billable) supervised research staff of the ECE faculty member hosting their visit.

The Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME) is an interdisciplinary unit; faculty with appointments in BME often hold cross-appointments or graduate faculty memberships in one or more other departments or units of the University. There is extensive interconnection between ECE and BME; some faculty with primary appointments in ECE also have BME appointments or GFM status in BME. Conversely, some faculty with primary appointments in BME have cross-appointment or GFM status in ECE.

BME have their own I.T. support staff not tied to ECE. Faculty and graduate students working within BME generally receive I.T. service and support from BME's own staff rather than from ECE RCS. For this reason, not all faculty cross-appointed between BME and ECE are subject to ECE RSC billing – only in cases where their supervised ECE grad students are assigned space in ECE research labs or grad offices.

In addition, ECE teaching and research include extensive interdisciplinary connections. Some ECE faculty have cross-appointments in other engineering departments, and in others including Computer Science, Physics, Math and Applied Math, and vice-versa. Professors with cross-appointments in ECE may supervise ECE graduate students if they have ECE GFM status. Only professors with their primary appointment in ECE are subject to billing for RCS support.

Finally, some faculty with primary appointments in another department are granted Graduate Faculty Membership in ECE, allowing them to act as supervisor or co-supervisor for graduate students enrolled in ECE.

In this case, the ECE students may require computer support services from either the supervisor's department or from ECE RCS. If the former, the external GFM supervisor is not billed for any ECE RCS support, including the “tier 3 user” fee for the ECE grad students they are supervising.

In the latter case, the external GFM supervisor can request billable services such as user login accounts on ECE's research Tier 1 Linux network or computer network access in an ECE office. In this event the external GFM faculty member would need to be added to the list of faculty who receive a monthly bill.

An ECE faculty member subject to billing by the above criteria is exempt from fees during the first year of their research appointment in ECE. This allows time for the faculty member to apply for research grants to cover these costs. This exemption covers all fees normally applicable, including for their own and all supervisees' PC, login or Tier 3 User fees.

ECE faculty with emeritus status receive a partial exemption for RCS fees, solely for one login account and one network connected PC for their own use. ECE Emeritus faculty are still subject to RCS fees for any other service items they continue to use, including additional PCs for themselves and PCs, logins, or Tier 3 user fees for their current research supervisees.

A PC, account, or Tier 3 user fee applicable to any research user who is co-supervised by two ECE faculty members is normally split 50/50 between the two supervisors. This split can be waived by agreement of both supervisors, with the full fee applied to one or the other supervisor instead.

Some support items such as servers are shared among all members of one of ECE's eight research groups. Such items are listed in inventory as belonging to the group; fees for these items are automatically divided equally among group members.

Some support items are shared by groups of professors among an ad-hoc group of faculty sharing a particular item. The billing system can designate such an ad-hoc group on a per-item basis.

Faculty may request the setup of a special RCS billing account apart from their main ECE faculty member bill, such as for a special project with segregated support funding. Special accounts receive a separate monthly statement, detailed on the internal website with a title using the faculty member's surname followed by two hyphens and a short text project designator. The faculty member may designate a different fund source for the special account bill than for their mail bill.