Purchasing Guideline

General Purchasing Guideline

  • All hardware/software requests charged to the departmental accounts should be approved by the Facilities Committee (FC).
  • Faculty members are strongly recommended to discuss with CS System about the support level should they want to buy any non-standard equipment, as not all types of equipment are fully supported by CS System.
  • Guildeline for mobile devices.

Faculty

  • For faculty specific purchasing guidelines, please refer to: Budget Allocation in the "Restricted Area".

PGs, RAs, Demonstrator/IAs and PostDoc

  • IA, Postdoc, RA will have his/her own machine, depending on what spare machine available at that time. The supervisors will have to request a new machine if such need arises.
  • Upon request, CSE RPg students with an assigned desk space will be provided with one desktop PC and one display monitor. The PG student's supervisor have to pay 30% of the total cost of the PC. The rest is paid by the CSE department. If the requirement is different from the standard configuration, the supervisor have to pay for 100% of the total cost. Typical Configuration(as of 2024):
  • Each PG office will have one laser printer.
  • Machines provided to IA/Demonstrator may be reviewed for upgrade when they are four years old.

PGs in special Labs

  • PGs assigned to a special Lab outside CS (e.g. BDI) should be provided with the same equipment. However the equipment will have to be moved back to the Department when they graduate.
  • For faculty advising PGs from other departments, there will be no equipment provision.

Teaching Labs

  • The hardware of four teaching labs will be upgraded once every four year in this order Lab1 → Lab2 → Lab4 → Lab3.
  • The projector in the teaching lab will be considered for possible upgrade together with the teaching lab hardware upgrade.
  • At least one laser printer is installed in each teaching lab.

FYP

  • Each faculty can request up to $3,000 for FYP equipment per year by default (no need to go through FC for approval). Request beyond the $3,000 limit will need approval from the FC. This policy has been reviewed and sustained.
  • Each request for FYP funding should specify the specific FYP project for which the equipment is being requested.
  • FYP allocation will be approved based on guidelines and the specific project noted down upon approval.
  • FYP allocation should not be used to purchase general equipment, e.g. PC.
  • Charging year will be determined by the FYP project specified.
  • No charge back or carry forward in general
  • Cannot be combined with other equipment funding
  • Equipment belonged to FYP, will be claimed back and reset default settings at the end of the FYP year
  • For any purchase request above $3,000, the special request should be sent to FC for discussion.
  • Clarification about FYP allocation/equipment by FC (Faculty access only)

Software

  • The Department supports mainly the following software requests:
    • Softwares for teaching or infrastructure.
    • Maintenance of softwares purchased by Department before.
  • The department has been providing many commonly used softwares as standard for faculty to use, e.g. Acrobat, Microsoft Offices, X-Win32, etc.
  • Sometimes, faculty request for special software. As a fule, faculty are encouraged to buy such software thorugh their research funds.
  • The FC will review the list of commonly used software from time to time.
 

Updated: Sep 8 2022

Any request not cover in the guideline can be sent to FC (email: ) for discussion/approval.