(a) Definitions for the purpose of this section:

(1) Facilities means land and buildings or any portion thereof, equipment individually or collectively, or any other tangible capital asset, wherever located, and whether owned or leased by the recipient or subrecipient.

(2) Idle facilities mean completely unused facilities that exceed the recipient's or subrecipient's current needs.

(3) Idle capacity means the unused capacity of partially used facilities. It is the difference between:

(i) That which a facility could achieve under 100 percent operating time on a one-shift basis less operating interruptions resulting from time lost for repairs, setups, unsatisfactory materials, and other normal delays; and

(ii) The extent to which the facility was actually used to meet demands during the accounting period. A multi-shift basis should be used if it can be shown that this amount of usage would normally be expected for the type of facility involved.

(4) Cost of idle facilities or idle capacity means maintenance, repair, housing, rent, and other related costs (for example, insurance, interest, and depreciation). These costs could include the costs of idle public safety emergency facilities, telecommunications, or information technology system capacity that is built to withstand major fluctuations in load (for example, consolidated data centers).

(b) The costs of idle facilities are unallowable except to the extent that:

(1) They are necessary to meet workload requirements which may fluctuate, and are allocated appropriately to all benefiting programs; or

(2) Although not necessary to meet fluctuations in workload, they were necessary when acquired and are now idle because of changes in program requirements, efforts to achieve more economical operations, reorganization, termination, or other causes which could not have been reasonably foreseen. Under this exception, costs of idle facilities are allowable for a reasonable period, ordinarily not to exceed one year, depending on the initiative taken to use, lease, or dispose of such facilities.

(c) The costs of idle capacity are normal costs of doing business and are a factor in the normal fluctuations of usage or indirect cost rates from period to period. These costs are allowable, provided that the capacity is reasonably anticipated to be necessary to carry out the purpose of the Federal award or was originally reasonable and is not subject to reduction or elimination by use on other Federal awards, subletting, renting, or sale, in accordance with sound business, economic, or security practices. Widespread idle capacity throughout an entire facility or among a group of assets having substantially the same function may be considered idle facilities.