The Federal Contract Services team is structured to facilitate expeditious processing by a linear process flow. Our team includes:
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Federal Contracts Coordinator, monitors and processes all incoming electronic correspondence to the OSP Federal Contract Services team central email account (fedcon@pitt.edu) ensuring that proposals, award actions (including subrecipient submissions), and sponsor communications are directed to the appropriate Federal Contract staff for follow-up or logged appropriately (creating our files of record). The Coordinator also conducts the setup, routing, and activation of certain AWD MyFunding records (e.g., Award Modifications related to nonfinancial and nonmaterial changes), verifies required documentation and data, and coordinates compliance checks. The Coordinator also is responsible for the team’s performance reporting required by sponsors, including Final Invention Statements (FIS), closeouts, and Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS).
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Federal Contracts Analyst, reviews select proposals and Just-In-Time actions, negotiates and processes select awards and modifications with sponsors or subrecipients, completes Representations and Certifications (including portion of annual SAM.gov filing), processes select prior approvals, subrecipient agreements and amendments and related items (except terms and condition/FAR clause flow-down), and subrecipient prior approvals, as well as secures all required signatures for the negotiated/processed agreements/items and distributes fully executed copies. The Analyst also acts as the back-up for the Coordinator.
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Federal Contracts Officers (FCOs), review and submit proposals and Just-In-Time requests, within their constituency, including complex submissions, to federal sponsors, including situations where Pitt acts as a subrecipient. Officers also negotiate and process awards and modifications with sponsors or subrecipients, including non-financial agreements. Additional responsibilities include coordinating sponsor communications, preparing and routing required documents and approvals, and managing amendments that involve changes to terms and conditions or other complex situations. Officers also prepare and submit prior approval requests to sponsors for significant changes during the award period, such as changes in scope, key personnel, or other major adjustments. Officers secure all required signatures for their actions and distribute fully executed versions. Officers also review Analyst actions, as needed, including subrecipient agreements/modifications, and act as back-up for Analyst.
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Senior Federal Contracts Officers (Sr. FCOs), have the same responsibilities as FCOs with the additional responsibilities of assisting with assessing team workflow, helping with training, and acting as mentors to FC team members. Sr. FCOs also negotiate and process more complex, higher risk, or politically sensitive awards.
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Associate Director (AD), oversees the entire Federal Contract Services team, including training of team members, assessing workflow, and other administrative matters. The AD also negotiates particularly complex or high-profile agreements or agreements as needed to address team workload, partners with internal Pitt Research offices to respond to internal and external requests, performs conferrals for the other areas of OSP, and executes agreements as an as authorized signatory.
The Federal Contract Services team, similar to the other two processing teams of the Office of Sponsored Programs, allocates work on a constituency basis. Each department is assigned to a contracts officer, who is responsible for the review and negotiation of all new federal contract, other transaction agreement, or Cooperative Research & Development Agreements (CRADA) requests received from that department, including non-financial requests. This approach allows each officer to become familiar with the departments he/she is responsible for and the specific types of research these departments conduct. Likewise, this distribution of assignments builds rapport between the faculty, departmental research administrators and our Federal Contract Services team. You can find your Federal Contract Services Team contact or you can email the Federal Contract Services team at fedcon@pitt.edu.
In order for the Federal Contract Services team to initiate its review of a new agreement, a formal request by the involved principal investigator (PI)/PI's department is needed. For non-financial agreements, an electronic submission is required in MyRA. For financial agreements, the submissions in MyRA and MyFunding capture information regarding the requesting department, the entity with whom we are establishing the agreement, the specifics of the research project and any compliance aspects. As the information contained in the submission provides the context for our negotiation of the agreement, complete and accurate information in the submission is essential to ensure that the finalized agreement contains the language necessary to protect the PI's interests and those of our University.
Please note that the principal investigator listed on any submission submitted to the Federal Contract Services team must be an individual holding a faculty appointment with our University.