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Ascension is seeking an experienced Document Governance & Quality Specialist who can serve as a senior document-management and quality-control resource supporting NHTSA’s national regulatory rulemaking activities.

This individual will help establish and enforce the disciplined document-management practices necessary to move highly complex regulatory documents from working drafts through review, comment resolution, quality assurance, and final publication. NHTSA’s rulemaking documents can range from approximately 150 to 1,500 pages, can involve more than 30 authors, and may undergo numerous clean and redline iterations before final approval.

The right candidate is not simply a proofreader or traditional technical writer. Ascension is seeking someone who understands document governance: how templates, styles, naming conventions, version controls, review procedures, issue logs, drafting standards, and QA/QC checkpoints work together to keep a complex federal regulatory document accurate, traceable, controlled, and publication-ready.

The successful candidate should be exceptionally detail-oriented while still understanding the broader rulemaking process. The role requires someone who can independently identify inconsistencies, anticipate downstream document-production problems, recommend practical solutions, and know when an issue should be elevated to project leadership or NHTSA/DOT document drafters.

The ideal individual is calm under deadline pressure; capable of managing multiple versions and competing inputs without losing traceability; comfortable working with senior government professionals and technical authors; and able to provide clear, tactful guidance when documents do not conform to established standards.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Document Governance & Quality Specialist serves as a senior quality and governance resource supporting the creation, review, revision, control, and final production of NHTSA regulatory documents.

The position will help develop and maintain document templates, style guidance, peer-review checklists, version-control procedures, comment-management processes, and other document-production controls. The Specialist will also perform or oversee QA/QC reviews of complex regulatory documents to identify errors involving formatting, grammar, references, tables, captions, footnotes, hyperlinks, cross-references, numbering, styles, and document consistency.

NHTSA specifically requires support for rulemaking products such as NPRMs, ANPRMs, SNPRMs, Final Rules, Technical Support Documents, Regulatory Impact Analyses, and environmental documents. The contractor must be capable of creating and maintaining multiple redline and clean versions and managing comments received from various DOT offices and other Federal agencies.

This Specialist will work closely with Consultants I and II and the project leadership team, providing guidance, identifying risks, reviewing output quality, and escalating issues requiring immediate attention. The role also supports the Technical Plan, which must address the style guide, version control, management of section comments, footnote indexing, and related document-management controls.

Position Day-to-Day / Anticipated Activities

The successful candidate will:

• DEVELOP and maintain standardized templates, formatting conventions, drafting aids, peer-review checklists, and document-management procedures supporting NHTSA regulatory publications.
• APPLY NHTSA style requirements and applicable guidance from sources such as the Office of the Federal Register’s Document Drafting Handbook.
• RECOMMEND revisions to style guides, drafting instructions, document templates, and quality-control procedures when recurring issues or inefficiencies are identified.
• SUPPORT development and maintenance of the project’s Technical Plan, including document governance, version-control methodology, comment management, and footnote/reference controls.
• REVIEW regulatory documents for readability, consistency, document structure, formatting, grammar, spelling, pagination, section numbering, headings, tables, figures, captions, references, footnotes, hyperlinks, and cross-references.
• PERFORM senior-level QA/QC checks before documents advance to subsequent review or publication stages.
• COMPARE document versions and verify that approved changes have been accurately incorporated.
• GENERATE or validate clean and redline versions of regulatory documents using advanced Microsoft Word functionality.
• CONTROL document versions so that working drafts, government comments, disposition decisions, and approved versions remain traceable.
• MAINTAIN document issue logs, comment-resolution records, revision histories, review checklists, and other governance artifacts.
• VERIFY that changes received from NHTSA, DOT offices, and other Federal agencies are incorporated into the appropriate master document.
• COORDINATE with project personnel and government authors to clarify document-production questions and resolve formatting or quality issues.
• GUIDE Consultant I and Consultant II personnel regarding document standards, QA/QC procedures, formatting requirements, and document-production expectations.
• ALLOCATE or recommend the allocation of document-production resources when rulemaking activity creates changing workload demands.
• MONITOR document-management activities against schedules, milestones, quality standards, and established procedures.
• IDENTIFY recurring errors, process bottlenecks, version-control risks, or document inconsistencies before they affect deadlines.
• FLAG issues requiring immediate attention by project leadership, the COR/ACOR, NHTSA personnel, or DOT lead document drafters.
• TROUBLESHOOT document compatibility issues involving Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and other collaborative document environments.
• SUPPORT SharePoint and/or Google Drive document-storage, organization, retrieval, access, and collaboration practices.
• VALIDATE Section 508 accessibility requirements applicable to reports and electronic deliverables.
• PROVIDE concise project updates concerning document status, quality findings, unresolved issues, and risks.
• RESPOND rapidly during peak rulemaking periods when accelerated document review, correction, or production is required.