Clauses · FAR · Administration and definitions
FAR 52.217-8 Option to Extend Services
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No flow-down mandate: FAR 17.208(f) directs the contracting officer, and neither the clause nor Subpart 17.2 requires a prime to insert it in subcontracts. Primes mirror it because the Government can extend the prime contract by up to six months under its own 52.217-8, and without a matching option the prime would have to renegotiate with every sub to cover that tail. The CACI Corvus labor-hour subcontract and AAR's C-40 noncommercial PO terms (rev 11, Jan 2026) both carry it at the current NOV 1999 designation.
A clause can reach your subcontract without a mandate. Once it is in your document, it is a contract term all the same. The missing mandate is a fact about the regulation. It is not a ruling on your order.
Checked against acquisition.gov on 2026-08-05 · edition NOV 1999 (no alternates) · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗
What it makes you produce
One item for your checklist.
Nothing to send now
It does not hold the order. It decides what money moves later — what you can claim, what can be claimed from you, and what can be held back — and none of that changes after signature.
A price that carries up to six more months of the same services, because an exercised extension runs at the rates already written into the contract
FAR 52.217-8
When it is used
FAR 17.208(f): insert a clause SUBSTANTIALLY THE SAME as 52.217-8 in solicitations and contracts for services when the inclusion of an option is appropriate. No dollar threshold, no contract-type restriction, no commercial carve-out written into 17.208(f) — the gate is that the requirement is for services and that an option is appropriate under 17.200 and 17.202. Note the prescription says 'substantially the same as', so the version in front of you is legitimately allowed to differ from the FAR text; read it, do not assume. The clause has one blank: the period within which the option may be exercised (FAR 17.204(b) requires the contract to state it).
Read closely
No lettered paragraphs, so the citation stays at the clause. The only escalation route inside it is a revision to prevailing wage rates issued by the Secretary of Labor, so work outside the Service Contract Act carries six months of wage, material and overhead inflation at the original rate. The option may be exercised more than once, up to six months in total, and the clause has one blank: the period within which it may be exercised.
The 1 template that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.217-8, FAR 17.208(f) and FAR 17.204(b) and (e); acquisition.gov FAR Overhaul deviation guide (Part 17 model text posted 2025-09-11) (verified 2026-08-05)
This is research, not legal advice. It states what the regulation says about this clause and cites the paragraph behind it. It does not rule on your order, and it does not rule on whether a prime's markings are correct.