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Ascension is seeking a highly detail-oriented Document Production Specialist to support the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy Program in preparing, formatting, controlling, and producing complex Federal regulatory documents.

This is not a traditional administrative word-processing position. The successful candidate will work within a highly controlled Federal rulemaking environment where individual documents may range from approximately 150 to 1,500 pages, pass through numerous authors and reviewers, and require repeated clean and redline versions before publication. The specialist will help ensure that NHTSA’s rulemaking products are accurate, consistently formatted, accessible, traceable, and publication-ready.

Ascension is particularly interested in candidates who combine exceptional Microsoft Word skills with disciplined document-control habits. The ideal candidate notices inconsistencies others miss, understands how one formatting change can affect a several-hundred-page document, can manage competing edits without losing document integrity, and remains organized under accelerated review schedules.

The strongest candidate will be comfortable supporting technical and regulatory professionals, working with documents written by numerous authors, maintaining precise version histories, resolving formatting discrepancies, and rapidly producing professional documents without compromising accuracy.

2. Summary of the Contractor Role

The Document Production Specialist supports the production lifecycle of major NHTSA regulatory documents associated with the CAFE and Fuel Efficiency programs. The Government identifies the underlying contractual role as Consultant I and specifically requires familiarity with Microsoft tools—particularly Microsoft Word—as well as Google tools and SharePoint. Consultant I is responsible for formatting document sections, tables, footnotes, plots and their headers, tracking edits made by lead drafters, and maintaining records of responses to leadership comments.

Within the broader document-management process, the specialist will help assemble and maintain major rulemaking products such as preambles, Regulatory Impact Analyses, Technical Support Documents, NPRMs, ANPRMs, SNPRMs, Final Rules, and environmental documentation.

The position supports an environment in which documents are continuously revised by NHTSA, DOT, and other Federal stakeholders. The specialist must therefore be equally proficient in document production, proofreading, quality control, version control, comment tracking, collaboration, and deadline management.

The role will use or interact extensively with:

• Microsoft Word and Microsoft 365
• Google Docs and Google Workspace tools
• Microsoft SharePoint
• Google Drive/shared-drive environments
• Microsoft Excel and/or Google Sheets
• Adobe Acrobat/PDF tools
• Track Changes, Compare, redlining, styles and templates
• Document issue/comment trackers
• Section 508 accessibility tools and procedures
• NHTSA document style standards
• Office of the Federal Register Document Drafting Handbook requirements

NHTSA’s primary requirement is to rigorously manage document creation, storage, sharing, clean/redline production, version control, document accessibility, and troubleshooting throughout the Federal rulemaking process.

3. Position Day-to-Day Activities

The successful candidate will:

• FORMAT complex Federal regulatory documents using advanced Microsoft Word functionality, including styles, sections, headings, pagination, tables, footnotes, captions, plots, headers, cross-references, and hyperlinks.
• ASSEMBLE individual author submissions into controlled master documents while protecting the integrity of the approved document structure.
• PRODUCE clean and redline versions of documents at multiple stages of the regulatory review process.
• TRACK edits received from lead drafters, reviewers, NHTSA leadership, DOT offices, and other Federal stakeholders.
• MAINTAIN accurate document version histories, revision records, comment matrices, issue logs, and document status information.
• PROOFREAD documents for grammar, spelling, formatting, readability, broken links, inconsistent captions, incorrect table or figure references, footnotes, subsection references, and other production errors.
• APPLY NHTSA-approved style guides, templates, drafting instructions, and document-control procedures consistently across large multi-author documents.
• UPDATE tables, figures, captions, cross-references, hyperlinks, footnotes, indexes, and related document elements following revisions.
• VERIFY that table captions, figure captions, footnotes, references, headings, and document navigation elements correspond to the correct content.
• COMPARE multiple document versions and identify unintended, conflicting, or missing changes.
• INCORPORATE approved comments and revisions into controlled master documents without overwriting or losing previously approved content.
• COORDINATE with document leads and, as authorized through the COR/ACOR, authors and reviewers to clarify document-production issues and close outstanding comments.
• ORGANIZE incoming files and comments received from NHTSA, DOT offices, and other Federal agencies into established repositories and filing structures.
• MANAGE assigned files within SharePoint, Google Drive, and other approved collaborative environments using established naming and version-control conventions.
• TROUBLESHOOT Microsoft Word and Google Docs formatting or compatibility problems and elevate technically complex issues when necessary.
• PREPARE publication-ready Word/DOCX and PDF materials consistent with Government production requirements.
• CONVERT supporting reference material into PDF or other required formats and assist in maintaining reference inventories.
• PERFORM document-level Section 508 accessibility reviews and remediation in accordance with NHTSA-provided guidance.
• IDENTIFY quality, scheduling, version-control, or document-integrity risks before they affect a submission deadline.
• ESCALATE unresolved formatting, content-control, or technical issues promptly to the Consultant II or appropriate project lead.
• RESPOND rapidly to production requests during accelerated regulatory review periods, including authorized evening, weekend, or overnight support when required.
• PROTECT sensitive Government information and comply with applicable DOT/NHTSA privacy, information-security, confidentiality, and document-handling requirements.