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ASCENSION is seeking a highly experienced Senior Federal Program Manager to serve as the BPA Manager and designated Key Personnel for a potential five-year Federal Emergency Management Agency Grant Programmatic, Administration, and Technical Services Blanket Purchase Agreement.

This individual serves as ASCENSION’s senior management representative and primary operational point of accountability for BPA-wide performance supporting FEMA’s Grant Programs Directorate. The position is responsible for coordinating contract execution, overseeing order-level project managers and multidisciplinary personnel, maintaining performance and quality controls, and ensuring that technical, administrative, financial, and reporting obligations are completed accurately and on time.

The ideal candidate combines federal program leadership, contract management discipline, grants or mission-support knowledge, and the ability to manage multiple workstreams in a fast-moving environment. This person must be comfortable working directly with contracting officials, CORs, program leaders, technical specialists, subcontractors, and executive leadership.

The successful candidate is an organized and decisive leader who anticipates risks, establishes clear accountability, communicates difficult information early, and converts broad or evolving customer needs into actionable plans, schedules, staffing decisions, quality controls, and measurable results.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Senior Federal Program Manager provides BPA-wide leadership and management oversight for grant programmatic, administrative, analytical, financial, communications, training, reporting, data, and technical support services.

The FEMA GPATS BPA has an anticipated ordering period of one 12-month base period and four 12-month option periods. The solicitation identifies the Senior-Level Project Manager/BPA Manager as the BPA’s only expressly designated Key Personnel position and requires a bachelor’s degree and at least 10 years of experience. The Government’s estimated price schedule provides 1,920 hours per annual performance period for this role, supporting classification as a full-time position.

The BPA Manager coordinates performance across orders rather than personally executing every technical task. This individual establishes the management structure that allows order-level teams to plan and deliver work consistently, including:

• Grant program planning, implementation, and administration
• Pre-award and post-award grant support
• Program and financial monitoring
• Audit-response support
• Business and process analysis
• Program evaluation and performance measurement
• Data analysis, reporting, and dashboard support
• Communications and stakeholder engagement
• Training and technical assistance
• SharePoint and database support
• Administrative and operational support

The role also oversees BPA-level deliverables, including the post-award conference, Quality Control Plan, Project Management Plan, progress meetings, performance reporting, and other general reporting requirements identified by FEMA.

FEMA may issue fixed-price or time-and-materials orders under the BPA. Order quotations must identify the proposed technical approach, personnel, labor categories, hours, labor mix, and supported PWS tasks. Expedited order quotations may be required within 48 hours.

Key Responsibilities and Anticipated Activities

The Senior Federal Program Manager is expected to:

• Serve as ASCENSION’s principal management representative for BPA-wide contract performance and customer coordination.
• Lead BPA startup activities, including the post-award conference, transition planning, governance establishment, communication protocols, and implementation of management controls.
• Develop and maintain the BPA-level Project Management Plan defining scope governance, organizational responsibilities, schedules, communications, risk management, quality management, staffing, reporting, and change-control processes.
• Develop and administer the Quality Control Plan, quality review workflows, corrective-action procedures, and deliverable acceptance controls.
• Translate FEMA requirements and order requests into practical execution strategies, staffing models, schedules, milestones, deliverables, and performance measures.
• Coordinate preparation of order quotations, including technical approaches, proposed order leads, labor categories, hours, labor mix, schedules, risks, assumptions, and management controls.
• Respond to expedited order quotation requests within the required timeframe, including requests that may require submission within 48 hours.
• Direct order-level project managers, analysts, grants specialists, trainers, communications personnel, financial specialists, data analysts, SharePoint specialists, and administrative personnel.
• Assign responsibility for tasks and deliverables based on personnel qualifications, workload, deadlines, and order-specific performance requirements.
• Monitor scope, schedule, cost, staffing, deliverable status, quality, dependencies, risks, issues, and corrective actions across concurrent orders.
• Maintain an integrated BPA-level view of active orders, upcoming deliverables, personnel utilization, customer decisions, risks, and financial performance.
• Review technical deliverables for completeness, consistency, accuracy, responsiveness, accessibility, and compliance before submission to FEMA.
• Enforce internal quality-control gates so that deliverables require minimal Government rework and are submitted on or before required due dates.
• Track plans of action and milestones and promptly inform FEMA and ASCENSION leadership when milestones, deliverables, staffing levels, or performance standards are at risk.
• Facilitate recurring progress, performance, risk, staffing, and leadership meetings with the COR, Contracting Officer, order-level CORs, program offices, and contractor teams.
• Prepare meeting agendas, status materials, executive briefings, decision requests, meeting minutes, action registers, and follow-up communications.
• Produce accurate BPA-level progress reports describing accomplishments, activities completed, deliverables, staffing, schedule status, risks, corrective actions, and planned activities.
• Coordinate financial and administrative reporting with ASCENSION’s contracts and accounting personnel, including labor-hour validation, invoice support, order funding, burn-rate monitoring, and reconciliation of billed activities to authorized work.
• Verify that personnel charge only to authorized BPA orders, labor categories, tasks, and periods of performance.
• Manage subcontractor performance, deliverables, staffing, reporting, and compliance when subcontractor personnel support an order.
• Identify performance deficiencies, determine root causes, implement corrective and preventive actions, and verify that corrective actions remain effective.
• Escalate potential scope changes, unauthorized direction, funding concerns, contractual risks, personnel issues, and schedule threats through the appropriate contractual channels.
• Maintain the non-personal-services boundary by ensuring that ASCENSION—not Government personnel—directs, supervises, evaluates, and manages contractor employees.
• Coordinate recruitment, onboarding, replacement, retention, cross-training, and surge staffing needed to maintain uninterrupted performance.
• Ensure that contractor personnel complete required security, privacy, nondisclosure, system-access, identification, and Rules of Behavior requirements before accessing FEMA systems or sensitive information.
• Support CPARS-related performance documentation and coordinate ASCENSION’s response to Government performance assessments.
• Protect sensitive, procurement-sensitive, proprietary, personally identifiable, and Government information in accordance with BPA and order-level requirements.
• Ensure that artificial intelligence is not used or deployed in contract performance unless expressly authorized by the Contracting Officer, as required by the solicitation.