Obtaining a Budget Price

What will the estimated cost be?

Please ask firms for budget prices, but don't settle on a particular item or supplier or get into detailed discussions with your favourite firm.  For acquisitions over £100k you will have to go to tender anyway and all quotations received before this will have to be set aside: it is also likely that the quotes received will be out-of date by the time funding becomes available. 

At this stage it is reasonable also to request a general statement of the approximate running costs of the equipment over its expected life (this is dealt with in more detail in the section on Specification of Requirements that follows).

The information received from this stage should be sufficient for applications to funding bodies.