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Ascension is seeking a Senior Government Purchase Card Compliance, Policy, and Training Consultant to support the National Institutes of Health Government Purchase Card Program. This position is intended for an experienced compliance, internal audit, acquisition, or financial-management professional who can independently evaluate purchase-card transactions and files, interpret federal regulations, develop defensible findings, update program policy, and translate compliance requirements into practical training and guidance.

The successful candidate will serve as proposed key personnel and a senior functional resource supporting the oversight of a Government Purchase Card program with approximately 950 cardholders, 500 Card Approving Officials, 30 NIH Institutes and Centers, approximately 27,000 monthly transactions, and more than $266 million in annual purchase-card spending.

This position is well suited for a professional who combines:

• Government purchase-card, acquisition, financial, audit, or internal-control expertise.
• Strong analytical judgment and attention to transactional detail.
• The ability to interpret policies and apply them consistently to complex or unusual purchases.
• Excellent written communication and the confidence to brief cardholders, approving officials, coordinators, and Government program leadership.
• Experience developing policies, compliance reports, training materials, and corrective-action recommendations.
• The professional maturity to work independently in a remote environment while protecting sensitive Government information.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Senior Government Purchase Card Compliance, Policy, and Training Consultant will lead and perform risk-based reviews of NIH purchase-card activity to identify improper, unsupported, suspicious, or otherwise noncompliant transactions. The consultant will help evaluate 100 percent of purchase-card transaction data through data mining, business rules, trend analysis, and targeted review techniques. The role will also support comprehensive electronic file reviews of cardholders and Card Approving Officials selected through a risk-based methodology.

The consultant will obtain and reconcile transaction data, assess the completeness and sufficiency of supporting documentation, document findings, conduct entrance and exit briefings, prepare standardized review reports, and monitor corrective-action follow-up. Review conclusions must be accurate, consistent, well supported, and issued within the required timeframes.

In addition to compliance reviews, the consultant will help NIH maintain current purchase-card policies, refresher training, new cardholder and approving-official training materials, briefing presentations, responses to internal and external oversight organizations, and special analyses such as convenience-check reviews or disputed-transaction support. The role requires familiarity with federal internal controls, acquisition requirements, charge-card risk management, records retention, fraud indicators, and adult-learning principles.

The ideal candidate is self-directed, highly organized, objective, and comfortable managing multiple reviews simultaneously. The individual must be able to distinguish administrative errors from material compliance concerns, communicate difficult findings professionally, and recommend corrective actions that reduce risk without unnecessarily disrupting program operations.

Primary Responsibilities and Anticipated Activities

• Analyze approximately 27,000 monthly purchase-card transactions using Government-provided data, approved business rules, risk indicators, and trend-analysis techniques.
• Review purchase-card transaction data to identify suspicious, high-risk, unusual, split, unsupported, restricted, or potentially noncompliant purchases.
• Develop and periodically refine transaction-screening rules based on federal purchase-card regulations, GSA SmartPay guidance, NIH business rules, identified trends, and lessons learned.
• Validate the completeness, accuracy, and reconcilability of transaction data before performing compliance analysis.
• Select transactions and cardholder files for targeted or comprehensive review using documented, risk-based, and statistically supportable methods.
• Request receipts, approvals, purchase justifications, delegations, funding documentation, evidence of receipt and acceptance, and other supporting records from cardholders and approving officials.
• Evaluate whether supporting documentation sufficiently demonstrates compliance with purchase-card policies, procurement regulations, delegated authority, receipt and acceptance requirements, and records-retention standards.
• Document findings, evidence, conclusions, recommendations, and instances of noncompliance in standardized working papers and review templates.
• Prepare clear, accurate, and defensible review reports within the required 45-calendar-day reporting period.
• Conduct entrance conferences, exit briefings, and Institute-level debriefings with cardholders, Card Approving Officials, Purchase Card Coordinators, and Government program personnel.
• Explain preliminary and final findings professionally and provide the regulatory, policy, or documentary basis for each conclusion.
• Monitor corrective-action responses and perform follow-up reviews to determine whether deficiencies have been appropriately resolved.
• Coordinate review schedules, document requests, meetings, status updates, and correspondence through the NIH Purchase Card Compliance Inbox and other approved Government systems.
• Maintain review records, supporting documentation, reports, and analytical files in Government-authorized repositories such as SharePoint, shared drives, and Outlook.
• Revise the NIH Purchase Card Supplement, operating guidance, procedural documents, job aids, templates, and related program materials at least annually or when regulations change.
• Research updates to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, GSA SmartPay requirements, OMB Circular A-123 Appendix B, the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act, HHS purchase-card guidance, and NIH-specific policies.
• Assess the operational impact of regulatory or policy changes and recommend corresponding updates to procedures, controls, business rules, and training.
• Develop and update annual online refresher training for cardholders and Card Approving Officials.
• Create or revise new-cardholder, approving-official, and Purchase Card Coordinator training materials on a quarterly or as-requested basis.
• Deliver specialized training addressing emerging transaction trends, recurring deficiencies, new regulations, or identified control weaknesses.
• Prepare presentations, briefing materials, talking points, reports, and meeting content for monthly Purchase Card Coordinator meetings and other leadership engagements.
• Support special reviews, disputed-transaction analysis, convenience-check reviews, data calls, and time-sensitive program inquiries.
• Draft responses and supporting documentation for inquiries from OMB, GAO, GSA, HHS, OIG, NIH management organizations, and other internal or external oversight entities.
• Contribute review statistics, trends, accomplishments, open issues, and recommendations to monthly activity reports and annual program reports.
• Identify patterns of recurring noncompliance and recommend practical preventive controls, policy clarification, targeted communications, or additional training.
• Protect non-public Government information and comply with NIH and HHS requirements for encryption, privacy, records management, incident reporting, and acceptable system use.
• Collaborate with the Senior Manager/Director, NIH Purchase Card Program Manager, COR, Agency Program Coordinator, and other contractor personnel to ensure consistent review methodology and quality.
• Support quality-control reviews of working papers, findings, reports, correspondence, and training products before submission to NIH.
• Escalate suspected fraud, misuse, information-security incidents, material policy violations, and unresolved documentation issues through established Government and contractor channels.