SPARCS RUSH Agreement Processing Policy

Statement of Need

The Office of Sponsored Programs endeavors to advance the research, education and service missions of the university by negotiating and executing agreements in a manner that balances timeliness and efficiency with the due diligence required to reduce legal and financial risks to the university.

As the volume of sponsored research continues to grow, SPARCS is establishing the policy below to: (1) standardize the timelines for requests for RUSH requests; (2) create rules regarding what agreements can qualify for RUSH processing; and (3) encourage accountability, timeliness, and effective communication by internal stakeholders across the university to try to reduce the overall number of RUSH agreements.

What agreements can qualify for RUSH processing?

1. The PINS has been fully approved – Prior to routing a request using the form below, make sure that the associated PINS has been routed and approved at all levels. If the PINS has not been fully approved, please reach out to the appropriate parties for approval prior to submitting this request.
2. The agreement has a hard, justified deadline for execution – An agreement must have a hard deadline for execution to be treated as a RUSH. Examples of hard deadlines may include one imposed by the sponsor (e.g. end of fiscal year, submission in sponsor portal, etc.) or one dictated by the circumstances of the project (e.g. delivery of equipment or receipt of materials pursuant to the award required by a certain date, use of facility that cannot be rescheduled, etc.).
3. The deadline cannot be extended or mitigated by a pre-award account – If performance on the project needs to begin by a certain date, but could do by setting up a pre-award ledger-5 account, then that should be done in lieu of a RUSH request to allow SPARCS sufficient time to fully negotiate the underlying agreement. Also, if the deadline is imposed by the sponsor, a request should be made to the sponsor to extend the deadline (or explain why they’re unable to extend the deadline) prior to routing a RUSH request.
4. The deadline must be within the RUSH timelines described herein – If the deadline for execution of the agreement, depending on (1) the nature of the sponsor (industry/non-industry) and (2) the nature of the agreement (NC State template, sponsor template, amendment, etc.), is farther in the future than the timelines listed below, the agreement should not be considered a RUSH and should be processed as normal.

Note: Master Agreements (i.e. agreements intended to govern more than one project) are not eligible for RUSH processing. The sponsor may instead issue an award to the university on a non-master agreement, and subsequently negotiate a master for later projects on a non-rush basis.

Process once RUSH request is received in SPARCS

Projects qualifying for RUSH processing will be prioritized over non-URSH projects, but alongside other RUSH projects in the order in which the requests are received.  Please be award that SPARCS is likely to have multiple pending RUSH requests at any given time.

Submitting an agreement for RUSH processing does not, and cannot, guarantee that SPARCS will be able to meet the associated deadline.  SPARCS only has control over half of the process of negotiating an agreement for execution, and can only make best efforts to use available resources to move the negotiation forward (e.g. reviewing the agreement for modification, providing feedback to the sponsor, etc.). Highly complex or lengthy agreements present additional challenges and may be difficult to accommodate.  Investigators should inform SPARCS of an agreement or the need for an agreement at the earliest opportunity to increase the likelihood of an executed agreement ahead of the relevant deadline.