Frequently Asked Questions

What are the responsibilities/role of a Contract Administrator?

FTA Circular 4220.1F states that The Common Grant Rules require the recipient to maintain a contract administration system to ensure that it and its third party contractors comply with the terms, conditions, and specifications of their contracts or purchase orders and applicable Federal, State and local requirements. Many FTA recipients assign contracting duties to technical, financial or management personnel. If the recipient lacks qualified personnel within its organization to undertake the various procurement tasks, such as drafting specifications, evaluating contracts, or performing internal audits for the recipient, FTA expects the recipient to acquire the necessary services from sources outside the recipient’s organization. When using outside sources, the recipient should take appropriate steps to prevent or mitigate organizational conflicts of interest that would result in conflicting roles that might bias a contractor’s judgment or would result in unfair competitive advantage. Ch. III, § 3, FTA Circular 4220.1F.

The following are examples of activities of the Contract Administrator:

Receive, evaluate and act on value engineering and other change proposals
Negotiate cost and schedule impact related to change orders and other contract modifications
Process disputes under the Disputes Clause
Review and approve payments under the Progress Payments Clause
Monitor progress and ensure timely notification of anticipated overrun
Monitor financial status and advise the contracting officer if contract performance is jeopardized
Issue tasks under a task order contract
Perform property administration
Ensure contractor compliance with quality assurance requirements
Evaluate, for adequacy, the contractor’s engineering efforts and management systems that relate to design, development, production and testing
Evaluate and make recommendations on contractor requests for waivers and deviations
Monitor contractor’s small and disadvantaged business subcontracting
Ensure timely submission of required reports
Administer special clauses such as drug and alcohol testing
Receive, inspect and accept or reject partial deliveries and final deliveries of all contract deliverables
Assist the procurement office in contract close out.

(Reviewed: July 2010)