The Office of Research Management, Innovation and Outreach, a component of the Office of Research, Demonstration and Innovation (TRI), provides oversight and technical assistance to its FTA research recipients.  TRI is strongly committed to sound research design, application of sound research principles in its analyses, and the production of quality documents.  The tools provide guidance for the quality requirements for all FTA research documents; explains what activities are subject annual reviews; who is responsible for performing quality and verifying compliances; and provides templates and tools for successful implementing and maintaining research projects.

The purpose of these guidance tools is to provide a framework to ensure that:

• Quality work is consistently performed and that quality deliverable are consistently produced.
• Project continuity occurs in record-keeping and document review
• Orderly procedures are established to provide quality performance for research calculations, technical analyses, conclusions, and determinations.

We conducted a massive exercise to produce guidance tools that can be utilized for all recipients receiving USDOT federal funds for FTA research projects.  These tools were developed to provide guidance and set performance expectations for research recipient project teams for producing high quality research documents that comply with federal policies and regulations.  The guidance tools were designed to provide a functional and easily understood set of guidelines to maintain and ensure quality during the preparation, monitoring and managing of research projects. 

The guidance tools are organized into four units:

• Unit 1:  Powerpoint Presentation. - provides an overview of monitoring areas for research recipients.
• Unit 2:  Recipient Guidance Book. - identifies which compliance requirements are subject to quality control activities such as reviewing, checking, testing and understood by recipients.
• Templates and Tools.  for ensuring quality research budgets and Data Management Plan documents.

FTA has the following guidance tools available for recipients of research funds:

• Circular 6100.1E
• Research recipient SOP
• Power point Presentation
• Guidebook
• Template

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We welcome any feedback on the information and tools we’ve provided.