To improve its contract management, increase accountability, and justify the significant amount it pays for contracted services, the Authority should take the following steps by May 2019:
• Prioritize contract management efforts and reduce the frequency with which contract management responsibilities shift among Authority staff by establishing a formal process for hiring and assigning full-time, experienced contract managers. These contract managers should have duty statements reflecting their contract oversight responsibilities, and they should report to supervisors who understand those responsibilities and have extensive knowledge about the contracts' deliverables. In addition, those supervisors' duty statements should clearly lay out their responsibility for addressing any contract manager noncompliance with the Authority's contract management policies and procedures, whether reported by CMSU or identified by another means.
• Require CMSU to establish a schedule to monitor individual contract manager compliance and report annually the results of this monitoring to Authority executive leadership. To help ensure the integrity of its oversight role, CMSU should be composed of state staff in place of RDP consultants.
• Hold contract managers accountable for performing the duties that the Authority's policies assign to them. Specifically, CMSU and, to the extent necessary, contract managers' supervisors should require and review evidence from contract managers demonstrating their approval of deliverables, detection and resolution of contractor performance issues, and assessment of contract amendments for merit. The Authority should not accept observations and reports from its contractors or the RDP consultants in place of this evidence.
To prevent the inappropriate use of contractors to perform state functions, the Authority should develop procedures by May 2019 for evaluating whether new and existing administrative duties should be assigned to contractors or to state employees.
To ensure that contract managers' invoice reviews are complete and that invoiced costs are allowable under contract terms, the Authority should amend its applicable procedures by May 2019 to require contract managers to document their review of invoiced rates and expenses.
To ensure the consistency and effectiveness of its efforts to monitor the performance of the oversight firms with which it contracts, the Authority should develop a formal methodology by May 2019 for using the performance evaluation tool it has implemented. This methodology should include procedures for assessing the sufficiency of the oversight firms' review and approval of invoices for construction contracts.
To ensure that the oversight firms' spending is reasonable, the Authority should develop a formal process by May 2019 for tracking any out-of-scope work that the oversight firms perform. To reduce the likelihood that its contracts with the oversight firms run out of funds prematurely as a result of this additional work, the Authority should also develop a formal process for amending the oversight firms' contracts contemporaneously to change orders that significantly extend the timelines or increase the scope of work of the construction contracts that oversight firms oversee.