That's a newly instituted method of charging divisions per square foot of laboratory or office space they occupy. Most national labs have gone that route, removing space from the overhead rate. Swanks, however, recognizing that some organizations might be penalized more than others, has taken a cautious and studied approach to come up with a plan that's as fair as possible. But it would shift costs to direct charges and thereby improve our overhead rate by 6.5 points. Reducing the overhead rate helps us compete with the other labs.
Space becomes a cost of doing business rather than an uncontrollable overhead cost.
It's that sort of change that Swanks knows will not always come easy, but change the Lab must make just the same.