FAQ

FAQ

Request an Affiliate Appointment for a Team Member

If you have a team member who needs long-term LBL site access, you can request affiliate status for the individual by filling out this Affiliate Request form.

Please give us at least 2 weeks advance notice from when you'd like the affiliate to start. If the person is not a US Citizen, we need to submit the request with more than 30 days lead time to process the required approvals. Affiliates must have outside support, either through employment, consulting contracts, or their academic institution. 

On a practical note, many affiliate appointments won't qualify for a Berkeley Lab parking permit. Be aware that your team members may need to be creative with transit.

Affiliates are expected to remain current with all required LBL safety trainings, and must abide by all applicable policies and requirements including Intellectual Property, Site Access and Security. 

If your company is employing the affiliate, then your company will own any IP generated under the scope of the CRADA by that affiliate. If they are not employed by your company, it may be jointly owned.

For more details visit Berkeley Lab's Affiliate Policy.

Spend Project Funds - Services & Consultants

Pay for Services/Hire Using Your Project Funds at Berkeley Lab

There are three options for using the Fellowship research stipend to pay for people’s time. These options depend on many factors including the type of work being done and the employment or academic status of the person you want to work with. We are here to help you effectively navigate these questions and develop the strategy to enable you to get the most out of your Cyclotron Road Fellowship, so reach out to Melanie to discuss your priorities and explore your options. 

Existing Berkeley Lab Employee

This could be a fraction of your Lab collaborator’s time, or it could be support for a new person (such as a postdoc) working in the lab of a collaborator. For budgeting purposes, calculate the employee’s salary rate multiplied by three to account for burdens and overhead.

Consultant / Services Vendor

Your collaborator or a member of the Cyclotron Road team may set up a subcontract for a non-employee consultant. Contracting with a consultant or services vendor takes a minimum of three weeks to set up through procurement and the consultant may not perform work until a purchase order (PO) is awarded from LBL procurement staff to the vendor.

To put in a request to hire a consultant, please fill out a Cyclotron Road Request for Procurement form: go.lbl.gov/cyproc.

Our Procurement Request form will require you to upload 4 supporting documents that we must include in our requisition with our procurement department. These documents are also linked in the description sections of the Procurement Request form. The version that may be required will depend on what type of consulting agreement is needed, either "Fixed Price" or "Hourly Consultant". A fixed price agreement is used for quotes that involve a breakdown of the payment schedule by specific milestones or deliverables. Choose "Hourly Consultant" if your quote is for a specific hourly rate by an individual consultant. You may copy the examples below and edit them for your specific purposes.

Fixed Price Agreements: 

Hourly Consultants:

Note: If you want to hire a consultant, check to make sure you have determined the appropriate classification for the work they are doing as a consultant. If they will be performing hands-on work onsite you'll also need to set them up with a subcontractor job hazard analysis (sJHA) before any work occurs. Individual consultants may not be compensated for more than 90 billed days per year. The procurement overhead rate on consulting services is about 24%.

Ordering Supplies & Equipment

Supplies and equipment may be purchased with project funds; remember that equipment remains the property of Berkeley Lab and stays here when you leave the program. Different procurement methods carry different procurement burden rates (in addition to other standard overhead rates). Using the Lab’s eBuy system or a division pCard have the cheapest procurement burden at 3.7%. For other supplies or equipment not available through eBuy or pCard, the procurement rate is 11.3%. The total LBL overhead for most procurement requests is in the range of 17%-35%. Whenever possible, use eBuy vendors for ordering speed and cost-efficiency.

Please familiarize yourself with the Berkeley Lab's Restricted Items List before proceeding with any purchases. Contact the admin team if you have questions!

eBuy

The eBuy system is the only method of procurement that you may enter directly from logging into the procurement system. It can only be used to buy items that will be delivered to onsite LBL locations. For your first order, it helps to have an experienced fellow or admin team member walk you through. Join our Thursday morning office hour for personalized support.

Please use the following checklist for eBuy: 

If you need help with an eBuy order, visit the eBuy home page and the eBuy tutorials pages, or contact the admin team. To cancel or check on the status of an order visit the eBuy Manage My Orders page. To return an item, visit the eBuy Returns information page for instructions.

ePro Requisitions

We use the ePro system for quote-based orders. This is most common for vendors not listed in our eBuy catalog, but it is also used for supplies that you wish to have delivered to a non-LBL location (i.e., your offsite lab) or for purchase requests >$25k.   Note that these custom procurement orders require an LBL Buyer to negotiate them and have a burden of ~25%. Plan ahead: ePro procurement requisitions can take between 2-4 weeks, and sometimes longer depending on response time from new vendors during the subcontract set-up.

Submit your (non-eBuy) procurement requests to the admin team by filling out the form at go.lbl.gov/cyproc. Donduk Dovdon is the procurement lead for our teams. The form will ask you to include:

 eBay

Buying used equipment can only be done through a procurement requisition and requires DOE approval. This can take several weeks and is approval-intensive, so is not recommended if other procurement options are available. New items on eBay that have a "buy now" option may be ordered as listed above for non-eBuy vendors.

Buying Supplies & Equipment with Company (Non-LBL) Funds

In the event that you want to use company funds to purchase items for use in your onsite CRADA research, you must meet LBL safety compliance requirements for the material or equipment. Before you plan to bring any company-owned equipment onsite, send an email to the admin team for guidance on safety and procurement compliance reviews. See the Safety Page for more details.

Demo Equipment from a Vendor (or Other Loaned Items)

If you are borrowing equipment from another laboratory, educational institution, or other non-profit agency to use in your research here at LBL, or if this is a prior-purchase test and evaluation of equipment, please work with Katy Rose de Leon (as both safety and property rep for our program) to initiate a lending agreement process.

Please note two requirements that must be met for property borrowed from outside the Laboratory:

Electrical NRTL Approval

Electrical items must have one of these Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory certifications. Katy Rose will provide a green sticker if it has one of the listed certifications. If it does not, Ohmar Sowle, the Electrical Equipment Safety Inspector, will need to inspect it further. 

Get IT Support

Submit a request ticket via chat to the Berkeley Lab IT help desk or call 510-486-4357. You may need to provide your project ID number for some services. A common request from our teams is for an LBL email password reset link.

Having trouble logging into your Berkeley Lab email or using your name and password to log into an LBL system? Remember that you have to use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) now for most systems. You can download an authenticator App for your phone and use this when prompted for an MFA code. In addition, financial sites like eBuy may require that you're either logging in from within the lab network onsite, or using VPN from offsite. The financial websites also prefer the Firefox browser.

Visit the Berkeley Lab IT website for a description of their services and contact the Admin team if you need supervisor/host approval.

As a Berkeley Lab affiliate, you can set up a Zoom Pro account for video meetings using your LBL credentials.

You may also use your LBL credentials to view some eJournals through the UC Berkeley Library.

Wifi & Printing

For Wifi on the main campus, go to lbnl-visitor. No password is required. Or select lbnl-employee, and log in using your LBNL identity and password. For the Potter Street location, access the weekly "lbnl-visitor-offsite" password at go.lbl.gov/lbnl-visitor-offsite. 

For printing: locate your printer. Then download the Cisco VPN. Windows users also need to download the printer driver. Additional instructions can be found here. 

Connect to the VPN with the software, while connected to the LBL visitor Wifi network. Add the printer IP address to your computer (for Potter: 128.3.60.45, for Building 62: 131.243.12.12)

If you are having trouble, feel free to contact the IT Help Desk Chat. They will walk you through the process via Zoom, which can be much easier! 

Sending Mail

All Lab buildings have designated mail pick-up locations. Ask people in your vicinity to show you the nearest one. Business mail does not require postage; the mail room will process postage. Visit the shipping department website for information on sending and receiving packages.

Receiving Mail, Supplies and Equipment

Berkeley Lab has a single address, and you customize it with your "mailstop". The main Cyclotron Road office mailstop is MS: 62R0203. You can update your mailstop in the Berkeley Lab here.

If you are receiving lab equipment or supplies you should list your building and lab room number instead of a mailstop (i.e., 977-271 for the Potter building lab).

If you are receiving goods not purchased through Berkeley Lab, have the sender include "No PO" on the shipping label (see address example below). DO NOT PROCURE EXTERNALLY PURCHASED CHEMICALS OR GASSES FOR USE AT A BERKELEY LAB LOCATION. If you have a pressing need for an exception, consult with Katy Rose de Leon (copy Melanie Sonsteng) by email to discuss options.

You must verify the safety compliance of your item by consulting the documents found under the "Safety Resources" section above. If the item is a demo unit that needs to be returned or later purchased, there are additional steps to follow.

Example address for paper correspondence:

Your Name
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
One Cyclotron Road, MS: 50R4038
Berkeley, CA 94720

Example address for receiving packages outside of LBL procurement channels (you must have verified safety of items in advance of delivery; no chemicals or gasses):

Your Name
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
One Cyclotron Road, Building XX Room XXX [No PO]
Berkeley, CA 94720

How to Place a Work Order

A variety of services can be requested through the Lab's Work Request Center.

For work requests in our Cyclotron Road lab and office spaces, consult with Katy Rose de Leon. For work requests involving the Potter Street building send an email to Jim Cassell and copy Katy. 

Hazardous Waste Requisitions

The hazardous waste requisition guide can be found here.