The Authority's contract managers' official responsibilities do not always specify contract management duties. As of September 2018, the Authority's 56 contract managers were collectively responsible for 204 contracts with values totaling $5.6 billion. However, according to the contract administration manager, only three of those 56 contract managers serve in contract management roles full-time. Although records from the Contract Management Support Unit (CMSU) show that each of the eight contract managers responsible for the contracts we reviewed completed the Authority's required contract management training, our review of these individuals' duty statements found that only three specifically mentioned contract management duties.4 Further, only one of the individuals mentioned in this chapter carries the job title of contract manager. Although we refer to them all as such for the purposes of their responsibilities, their actual titles include administrator, engineer, and executive.
The former manager of CMSU acknowledged that the Authority has not established a formal practice for selecting contract managers and assigning them to contracts. Perhaps as a result of that fact, the Authority frequently changes the individuals responsible for managing each contract, resulting in high rates of turnover among its contract managers. For the nine contracts we reviewed, CMSU's roster of contract managers shows that five contracts had two or three different contract managers in the past year alone. In fact, the contract managers for three of the contracts changed during the period of our review from March through June 2018. High turnover has not only likely contributed to noncompliance with policies, but it also underscores the need for strong documentation practices.
For example, one new contract manager told us she received a transfer form from the previous contract manager indicating that all the required contract documentation was available and up to date. However, she did not sign the form because much of the documentation listed on the form was not actually available.
The responsibility for ensuring that contract managers perform required tasks lies with their direct supervisors, who themselves are not consistently trained in the Authority's contract management policies and procedures. Six supervisors managed the eight contract managers in our review, and half of them had not received training on the Authority's contract management policies and procedures at the time of our review. If they do not understand the Authority's specific requirements for contract management, supervisors may not be able to intervene effectively when contract concerns arise or to provide strong oversight to ensure contract managers adhere to policies and procedures. Additionally, these supervisors also have full-time responsibilities unrelated to contract management. In fact, some of the supervisors are in executive leadership positions, including the chief executive officer and the chief financial officer (CFO), each of whom oversees multiple contract managers in addition to their responsibilities for large segments of the Authority's operations. | Six supervisors managed the eight contract managers in our review, and half of them had not received training on the Authority's contract management policies and procedures at the time of our review. |
The Authority established CMSU within the Contract Administration Branch in part to oversee compliance with contract management policies and procedures, but its oversight has been weak and inconsistent. The extent of its oversight activities to date has been a fall 2017 review of whether contract managers had filed documentation in the locations and structure that the Authority's policies and procedures required. Although this review consistently found that contract managers had not filed required tracking logs as expected, CMSU did not take any additional steps to determine whether the contract managers were actually using those logs or to verify compliance with any other policy requirements. If CMSU had performed such additional reviews, it could have identified some of the more significant compliance issues we discuss later in this chapter.
In response to our concerns, the CFO asserted that the current set of contract management policies and procedures took significant effort to develop, as did developing and conducting the Authority's contract management training. However, he also acknowledged that the Authority has not yet taken additional steps to ensure compliance. Similarly, the director of the Contract Administration Branch (contracts director) asserted that only a short time has elapsed since the implementation of the Authority's new contract management policies and procedures and that the branch is relatively new. Given that these policies and procedures have been in effect for over a year and that the contract managers signed forms pledging to comply with them, we believe ample time has passed for the Authority to have conducted meaningful oversight. The CFO informed us that the Authority intended for CMSU to conduct contract manager compliance assessments and submit the results of these assessments to the contract managers' supervisors, as the Authority's policies and procedures specify. However, he confirmed that CMSU has not conducted these assessments and thus has not implemented the process of notifying supervisors of any noncompliance.
The CFO further expressed his belief that timing and leadership transitions have contributed to the Authority's general challenges in ensuring its staff comply with its contract management policies and procedures. He stated that since adopting its contract management policies and procedures in April 2017, the Authority has directed its efforts toward creating two new executive positions-the chief deputy director and the chief operating officer-to oversee new offices that would more appropriately include contract management. In October 2018, the Authority adopted a project management plan that includes placing contract management under the direction of these new executive positions. However, the plan is not sufficiently detailed to address shortcomings in the Authority's current contract management related to defining contract managers' formal duties and ensuring enforcement of those duties. We also do not agree that the time spent rearranging the high-level organization of contract management supplants the responsibility to simultaneously strengthen the existing system. If the Authority believes, as we do, that strong and accountable contract management is key to controlling the system's costs, it must commit to fully implementing and enforcing its contract management policies and procedures.
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4 One contract manager was responsible for two of the nine contracts we reviewed.