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Ascension is seeking an experienced Senior Program Manager / Quality Control Lead to lead contractor performance for the National Institutes of Health Government Purchase Card Program Support Services engagement. This individual will serve as Ascension’s senior operational leader and primary management interface with the NIH Purchase Card Program Manager, Contracting Officer’s Representative, and other designated Government stakeholders.

The selected candidate will manage a team responsible for reviewing government purchase card activity, conducting Cardholder and Card Approving Official compliance reviews, analyzing approximately 27,000 monthly transactions, supporting purchase card policy and training activities, and preparing recurring management and compliance reports. The NIH program currently supports approximately 950 cardholders and 500 Card Approving Officials across 30 Institutes and Centers.

This position is suited for a senior professional who combines program management discipline with strong experience in internal controls, financial compliance, audit or transaction review, federal acquisition, and quality assurance. The successful candidate must be comfortable evaluating sensitive financial information, supervising multiple concurrent review activities, applying regulatory requirements, approving working papers and reports, and communicating findings to senior Government stakeholders.

The ideal candidate is highly organized, analytical, composed under pressure, and able to exercise sound professional judgment with limited supervision. The candidate should be skilled at anticipating performance risks, resolving ambiguous compliance questions, managing competing deadlines, and maintaining the independence and objectivity required for audit-like review activities.

Contractor Role Summary

The Senior Program Manager / Quality Control Lead provides overall management, supervision, workload coordination, and quality control for all contractor activities performed under the NIH task order. The role is responsible for ensuring that work is completed accurately, securely, on schedule, and in accordance with the Statement of Work, applicable Government purchase card regulations, NIH business rules, and Ascension’s ISO 9001:2015 quality-management practices.

The Senior Program Manager will also review and approve working papers, findings, recommendations, reports, correspondence, presentations, and training products before submission to NIH. The position is responsible for staff supervision, schedule and workload management, performance measurement, security compliance, transition planning, surge coordination, and timely escalation of risks and issues.

The solicitation identifies the Senior Manager/Director as essential to contract performance and requires responsibility for team management and supervision, quality control, working-paper approval, adherence to applicable standards, and task-order management. Ascension’s Project Manager III labor category similarly requires management of quality, schedule, cost, scope, client meetings, consultant activities, risks, and agency-level workstreams.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Direct all contractor activities supporting NIH Government Purchase Card compliance reviews, program administration, policy, training, reporting, and special assignments.
• Serve as Ascension’s principal day-to-day management contact for the NIH Purchase Card Program Manager, COR, Agency Program Coordinator, and other designated officials.
• Develop and maintain the Contractor Project Management Plan, quality-control procedures, integrated work schedule, staffing plan, risk register, issue log, action-item tracker, and deliverable calendar.
• Assign targeted transaction reviews, comprehensive file reviews, data-analysis activities, policy tasks, training assignments, and reporting responsibilities based on workload, complexity, and staff qualifications.
• Monitor the review of approximately 27,000 monthly purchase card transactions using data mining, Government business rules, transaction trends, risk indicators, and contractor-developed analytical rules.
• Oversee the risk-based annual selection and review of approximately 10% of NIH Cardholders and Card Approving Officials.
• Review transaction selections, supporting documentation, working papers, findings, and recommendations to confirm that conclusions are adequately supported and consistently applied.
• Approve compliance-review reports, standardized letters, Institute-level summaries, briefing materials, and corrective-action follow-up documentation before Government submission.
• Ensure targeted and comprehensive review reports are completed within the applicable 45-calendar-day reporting requirements.
• Coordinate entrance conferences, exit briefings, Institute-level debriefings, monthly status meetings, and other stakeholder engagements.
• Facilitate discussions involving preliminary findings, noncompliance determinations, corrective actions, policy interpretations, and program recommendations.
• Maintain independence, objectivity, consistency, and appropriate professional skepticism throughout the compliance-review process.
• Establish review checklists, sampling controls, working-paper standards, naming conventions, version controls, approval gates, and corrective-action procedures.
• Conduct final quality-control reviews to verify factual accuracy, regulatory support, completeness, consistency, and proper handling of sensitive information.
• Evaluate Government purchase card regulations and policies, including applicable FAR requirements, GSA SmartPay guidance, OMB Circular A-123 Appendix B, HHS directives, NIH supplements, and related acquisition alerts or memoranda.
• Lead quarterly reviews of transaction-monitoring rules and recommend modifications based on purchasing trends, recurring findings, emerging risks, policy changes, and Government feedback.
• Oversee annual revisions to NIH purchase card policies, guidelines, supplements, and related program documentation.
• Supervise the development and quarterly update of new Cardholder, Card Approving Official, Purchase Card Coordinator, and refresher-training materials.
• Prepare or approve presentations for monthly Institute and Center Purchase Card Coordinator meetings and other Government briefings.
• Manage special reviews, convenience-check analyses, disputed-transaction support, data calls, and responses to inquiries from OMB, GAO, GSA, HHS, OIG, NIH OMA, and other oversight organizations.
• Submit accurate monthly activity reports by close of business on the first business day of each month.
• Produce or approve the annual purchase-card activity report covering all 30 NIH Institutes and Centers, including trends, statistics, recurring findings, and recommendations.
• Track workload, productivity, review aging, completion rates, report timeliness, open findings, corrective actions, quality-control results, and staffing utilization.
• Identify performance, schedule, quality, security, staffing, and regulatory risks and implement timely mitigation and escalation actions.
• Coordinate personnel onboarding, suitability processing, training completion, access requests, nondisclosure agreements, separation procedures, and staffing-roster updates.
• Enforce NIH and HHS information-security, privacy, records-management, encryption, incident-reporting, and Rules of Behavior requirements.
• Report suspected information-security or privacy incidents through the required Government channels within the prescribed reporting period.
• Manage personnel performance, coaching, cross-training, leave coverage, succession planning, and surge assignments.
• Review staff time, workload allocation, progress, and deliverable status to maintain performance within the task order’s scope and budget.
• Coordinate preparation and execution of the contract transition plan, including the orderly transfer of data, working papers, reports, training materials, files, databases, and other contract-developed products.
• Maintain complete and audit-ready project records in Government-approved systems, including SharePoint, Government shared drives, Outlook, and other authorized platforms.