As such, to ensure agencies are establishing adequate contingency budgets, we believe that the SC 4.1 Form should be revised to reflect the higher 5 percent rate. The current format of the SC 4.1 Form makes it difficult to calculate the contingency budget correctly. As a result, in some cases agencies apply a contingency rate to their project budgets that exceeds the rate allowed by OSPB guidelines. By excluding some project costs from their contingency budget calculations, agencies may not be setting aside sufficient funding for problems that may arise during a project. Revising the form to make it easier to calculate the contingency rate should help eliminate these errors.
Office agree or partially agree with all of our recommendations.
A summary of their responses to the recommendations, along with estimated implementation dates, can be found in the following Recommendation Locator.