Responsibility: KE Contracting Services
Prepared by: Contracts Functional Group and Subawards Functional Group
Work Instruction Number: WI-SN-70
Updated: April 23, 2025
This work instruction consists of the following sections:
Agreement verification
1. The Grant and Contract Officer (GCO) will verify whether or not proposal has been completely reviewed by Contracting Services (CS), through one of two ways:
1.1. Access the report Proposals Submitted with No Review and search by FP Number in the Find field. If nothing is found, the proposal is fully reviewed.
1.2. Click “PNT Review Status Update of Complete”, section of the ERA Workspace. Check for complete review: “Funding announcement reviewed”, “Proposal reviewed against PNT Checklist Complete”, and “Complete Review” or “Partial Review” depending on circumstances. Add additional comments as appropriate and then click OK.
1.3. If a proposal is marked “No Review” or “Partial Review,” run “Notify PNT” action to let PNT or IAG GCO know, then continue.
2. Once verification has been completed, the GCO has options to move forward with the agreement which are described in the next section.
Subaward verification
1. Following GCO assignment, the task will appear in the assigned GCO’s ERA Dashboard page within ERA Agreements. The state will be “Verification.”
2. The state will remain as “Verification” until the GCO has received all required subaward documents as identified in the subaward checklist and the GCO is ready to draft the Subaward Agreement.
3. Once verification has been completed, the GCO has options to move forward with the agreement which are described in the next section.
Agreement negotiation
1. Before any negotiation begins, a decision or multiple decisions will need to be made on the best method to reach a deal that is mutually satisfactory and acceptable for the parties. For these decisions, the GCO has their colleagues as well as the following guidance: Pre-Award Negotiation Job Aid, Contract Negotiation Guidance, FAR Tool and other job aids based on the agreement type. See related content.
2. The available processes within a task in ERA Agreements during negotiations includes the following states:
2.1. Move to Negotiating
2.2. Move to Internal Parties
2.3. Move to External Parties
2.4. Suspend Task
2.5. Cancel Task
2.6. Move to Signature Process
2.7. Finalize Task Request
2.8. Finalize Agreement
3. Each one of the above states has been defined within ERA Agreements and the GCO can move from state to state by running the activities identified in ERA Agreements. An example is “Move to Negotiating” changes the state to “Negotiating” and “Move to External Parties“ results in a status “With External Parties.”
4. In the majority of the ERA states, the GCO has the ability to run the following activities and actions. These activities and actions have been defined within ERA Agreements on when and how they should be used.
4.1. Other Activities that can be run in ERA task include:
Copy Task Request
Generate Agreement
Create Snapshot
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5. At all points during the negotiation of an agreement if the Sponsor or Subrecipient’s terms and conditions are different than what the university can accept, GCO will proceed to Business Decisions as noted below.
6. If an agreement has been reached with the Sponsor or Subrecipient and no business decision is needed, the GCO will proceed to Finalize Agreement in the task and follow the steps there.
Business decisions
1. At any point during the review and negotiation of an agreement or subaward, if there are terms and conditions that are unacceptable to Arizona State University in which the GCO anticipates or has been unsuccessful in negotiating, leadership or other ASU internal parties may be contacted for possible ways to work around those concerns and the business risk they pose before the process of negotiation proceeds or continues. The manager may reach out on behalf of the GCO to, for example, the Office of General Counsel, Risk Management, Skysong Innovations, ORIA, KE leadership or other internal offices.
2. Any non-standard terms accepted or business decision(s) made will be captured within the Negotiation Information Smart Form page with notes/comments to sections 6.0, 7.0 and 8.0. For additional guidance, please see the Business Decisions Matrix Tool.