Facility FAQs

I am an Honours/Undergraduate SCIE student – how do I gain independent access to a Core Facility?

The flow of approvals for independent access is as follows:

Honours/Undergraduate students must attend an SBMS Building Induction via the FoM OHS team prior to seeking access to a core facility.
Honours/Undergraduate students must set up an account in PPMS/RIMS (see Equipment/Facility bookings).
Honours/Undergraduate students must request equipment-specific inductions and training provided by the Core Facility Management staff prior to using SBMS Core Facility equipment.
Honours/Undergraduate students must undertake a Core Facility-specific induction before they can work either directly or indirectly supervised. This may be provided as part of the first equipment training, or separately, depending on the core facility. Contact the Core facility staff for details (see Contacts).
Students must keep their training records up to date.
Honours/Undergraduate students must be deemed competent on equipment prior to working independently. Competency can be achieved/recognised by undertaking supervised work.
While progressing towards competence, honours/undergraduate students can be supervised by a Core Facility Manager/Team member, or a graduate expert/competent user who has been given supervisory authority by the Core Facility Manager (this may be an Academic, Technical Officer, Postdoctoral Fellow or Senior PhD student).
SBMS Honours students, once deemed competent, can work independently (without direct supervision) outside of normal business hours by seeking approval from a Core Facility Manager. Only Facility Managers can approve after-hours access.
Undergraduate SCIE students can obtain approval to work independently during normal business hours, without direct supervision, as outlined above. However, they must always have indirect supervision*. SCIE students will not be granted after-hours access to SBMS Core Facilities, unless under the direct supervision of an approved supervisor.

^{*Indirect supervision is defined as working independently within a core facility, but only when a core staff member or approved supervisor is present.}

What is the definition of an “Internal” versus “External” facility user?

The guidelines around the categorisation of facility users are as follows:

External users incur external user fees, while internal users are charged at subsidized internal rates for the use of Facility equipment. In addition, categorisation may have implications for facility/equipment access, as in some cases internal users are given priority when booking heavily used equipment.

Definitions

Internal user – any facility user whose direct supervisor has a primary (or significant) appointment in SBMS and whose financial accounts are administered by SBMS.

External user – any facility user whose direct supervisor does not hold a primary or joint appointment with SBMS and whose financial accounts are administered outside of SBMS.

Policy

By default, internal or external fee structures will be applied to users based on the definitions outlined above. However, under some circumstances researchers that fall under external categorisation may request internal rate structures. Such requests shall be considered on a case-by-case basis by the relevant SBMS Core Facility Manager.

I have a PPMS/RIMS account for another UQ core facility. Do I need to create separate PPMS/RIMS account for the SBMS core facilities?

For most internal users a PPMS/RIMS account is automatically created, and this account can be used in all core facilities (including SBMS and non-SBMS core facilities). If you are an internal user and you do not have an account, contact rims_suppor@uq.edu.au for assistance.
External users will need to create a PPMS/RIMS account the first time they use one of the core research facilities at UQ. Once a PPMS/RIMS account has been created for one facility, it can be used in all facilities (SBMS and Non-SBMS). View more information on creating a PPMS/RIMS account.

I have created a project for another UQ facility. Do I need to create a new project to work in the SBMS core facilities?

Yes. PPMS/RIMS requires users to create separate projects for each core facility. These projects can have the same title/users/chart string if appropriate. The exception is the SBMS Analytical and SBMS Microscopy and image analytics core facilities. Projects created in the SBMS Analytical facility will be available for use in the SBMS Microscopy core facility and vice versa. Note that projects created in either the SBMS Analytical or SBMS Microscopy core facilities will not be available in other facilities (including SBMS facilities). Read more on creating a project in PPMS/RIMS.