I’m a post-doc reseach fellow, previously I’ve done a little bit of consultancy here and there, connected to my university research. I’ve recently been offered a more substantial bit of work which I could do in holiday time, and would give me enough money to put a decent deposit on a house, which is important as I have a wife and a fresh baby.
The work fits in with the remit of my post-doc work and I can publish from it so all good there.
However… if I go through the university they’ll take a massive chunk for their costs and departmental costs (e.g., £10000 of £25000, before tax). But they would offer indemnity and sort the tax out. I don’t really know what I’m doing – any tips from anyone?

Hmm, I guess it depends on if you do absolutely all the work in your own time and all your own resources. We’ve sacked staff in our place who have taken on consultancies and either used University resources, or mentioned the university in the technical report. So that would be the first thing I’d consider, second would be the IP concerned with any published work. If you’re publishing anything with the University’s name on it, I assume that they will claim the IP on it. So check very carefully whatever NDA and contract you sign with this other company.
The fact that you are pondering whether to mention this consultancy also means that you are considering depriving the University of business for personal gain. Again, check your contract.
At the end of the day you’ve got to weigh up the risks and decide what to do, plenty get away with it, but some don’t 🙂

Ian puts some good points. If you are going to take the full £25K, you should not be relying on your university for anything – IT, indemnity, facilities, library, accountant etc. There’s a reason good consultancy costs a lot – your overheads get silly quite quickly. Also, you must be careful not to tread on your department’s toes or publish anything that will be detrimental to it. If you are considering jumping to self employed, think long and hard. I went self employed for a bit and found out very quickly that if the work dries up you lose out very rapidly. £400 a day sounds great until you take away overheads and find you are only going to be working 1 day in 10.
Have you considered that simply bringing in consultancies as part of your post doc is browny points? Not quite research grants but still good links with industry and showing ability to generate incoome – both very useful for future job wranglings…

Yes all good points. I guess it’s a grey area. The company approached me directly, I won’t need to use lab facilities or anything – but I hadn’t considered the library and journal subscriptions etc, good point. It’s all good and will result in extra publications, perhaps some future studentships with the company, and establishing new contacts. I just think the fee seems excessive (£2500 for the University consultancy team, £7500 for the Departmental costs). I don’t want to seem greedy, but I’d like to own a house one day!

If you’re on a similar contract to me, you should be able to do a certain number of days consultancy as part of your job, as long as your line manager agrees.

Here, we can choose whether to get the university to handle tax etc or to do it privately, i.e. Fill in a tax return but i don’t think that affects use of computers or using your uni title etc. It is pretty common for people to do consultancy and do their own tax.

You need to talk to people in your department who do a lot of consulting though – might be different at different places.

Joe

Similar here Joemarshall, but we can’t use the university name, and I don’t know about office space etc. My line manager etc all agree it’s ok. I’m trying to speak to people who do lots of consultancy – but oddly enough they’re all busy! I think we’re entiltled to do up to 30 days consultancy.