Clauses · FAR · Administration and definitions
FAR 52.233-1 Disputes
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
There is no flow-down mandate — not in 52.233-1, not in 33.215. Primes mirror it back-to-back so that a disagreement with you tracks their disagreement with the Government, and above all so that paragraph (i) binds you: keep working while it is unresolved. State the consequence plainly, because it is the single most misread fact in this batch. The Contract Disputes Act (41 U.S.C. chapter 71) runs only between the Government and its prime contractor. As a subcontractor you have NO privity and NO direct route to the Contracting Officer: you cannot submit a claim to the CO, you cannot certify one, you cannot get a contracting officer's final decision, and you cannot appeal to the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals or the Court of Federal Claims. Everything runs through the prime, and only if the prime agrees to sponsor your claim in its own name as a pass-through. What the flowed-down clause gives you is the duty in (i), not the ladder in (d) through (h). Most prime templates then substitute the prime for 'Contracting Officer' in the flowed-down text, which converts a Government adjudication clause into an obligation to keep performing on the prime's say-so.
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 MAY 2014 (Basic; Alt I DEC 1991) · 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.
The four-part certification a claim above $100,000 has to carry, executed by someone able to bind the company, and the cost records standing behind it
FAR 52.233-1(d)(2)(iii)
When it is used
FAR 33.215(a): insert in solicitations and contracts unless the conditions in 33.203(b) apply — i.e. unless the contract is with a foreign government or agency of one, or with an international organization or subsidiary body where the agency head determines applying the Disputes statute would not be in the public interest. No dollar threshold, no contract-type restriction, no commercial carve-out: a commercial contract reaches the same clause through 52.212-4(d), which incorporates 52.233-1 by reference. Alternate I when agency procedures determine that continued performance is necessary pending resolution of a claim arising under OR RELATING TO the contract.
Read closely
Paragraph (i) is the part that binds a subcontractor: work proceeds diligently while a request for relief, claim, appeal or action is unresolved. The ladder in (d) through (h) runs between the Government and its prime — the Contract Disputes Act gives a subcontractor no privity and no route to the contracting officer, so a claim travels only where the prime sponsors it in its own name, proved years later out of your job-cost books.
Alternates
Alt I · DEC 1991
FAR 33.215(a) — agency procedures determine that continued performance is necessary pending resolution of a claim arising under or relating to the contract.
Alt I substitutes paragraph (i) to add the words 'or relating to', widening the disputes during which work continues to breach and interpretation questions outside the contract's own adjustment clauses; it produces no new paper.
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.233-1, FAR 33.215(a), FAR 33.203(b) and FAR 52.212-4(d); federalregister.gov API document 2026-12559 for the Part 33 proposed rule (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.