UC Davis Research Funds:

Community Comments

     Anyone familiar with government procurement processes – about 60 percent of the grants at the university come from the federal government – would agree with Barry Klein, vice chancellor of research, that the money “comes with more strings than you can possibly imagine.”     
     Understanding the flow of funds is further complicated by UC Davis’ labyrinth of an administrative operation and its use of fund accounting – the system used by higher education institutions to track state appropriations, tuition and fees, as well as grants and endowment income.  The money moves through a five-tiered system that Klein laughingly says he doesn’t truly understand or think he ever will.     
     Sam Driggers, director of economic development and regional policy at the Sacramento Metro Chamber, has been in the job nearly a year and a half and before that worked in a similar capacity on the state government side. He’s no stranger to the frustrations of procurement and bureaucracy.  

Making Huge Impacts
“Like any sort of big organization, the different schools at UC Davis in the past have seemed to be sort of ‘siloed off’ from each other, distant and very protective of projects and funding,” he says.      Driggers says this made it that much harder for outside subcontractors, especially smaller ones or those new to the game, to fathom exactly how to apply and qualify for the money. “In the past two years,” he notes, “Davis has gotten savvier. The university is making huge impacts in the life sciences and biotech and all this interaction is becoming focused, just like electrons and protons bouncing off each other.”     
     There are many vendors in town already familiar with that impact and the challenges that come with it, such as Graphic Center, a 20-year veteran vendor and one of the largest privately held commercial printing companies in Sacramento.  

Bidding Due Diligence
Continued...