Clauses · FAR · Administration and definitions
FAR 52.244-2 Subcontracts
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No mandate: paragraphs (a) through (j) address only the Contractor's own purchases, and nothing in FAR 44.204 requires insertion in subcontracts. Primes flow it down anyway — 8 of 43 corpus documents, including the RTX, BAE and L3Harris master flowdown lists — to preserve the consent chain. The prime owes the Contracting Officer consent and advance notice for its lower tiers and cannot deliver that without the same hooks in its own subcontracts. On DoD work the pressure is structural: DFARS 252.244-7001, Contractor Purchasing System Administration (JAN 2025, prescribed at DFARS 244.305-71), attaches to a contract containing FAR 52.244-2, and a purchasing system that fails to flow required clauses down is a system deficiency with payment withholding attached.
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 JUN 2020 (Basic; Alt I JUN 2020) · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗
What it makes you produce
3 items for your checklist, slowest first.
Something somebody else has to issue you
The same day if the issuer is one of your own suppliers, months if it is an assessor or an underwriter.
- FAR 52.244-2(c)
The contracting officer's written consent, in hand before you place a lower-tier subcontract that needs it
Owed with no approved purchasing system for every cost-reimbursement, time-and-materials or labor-hour lower-tier subcontract, and for a fixed-price one above the figures (c)(2) sets
Something you write2
Days to weeks, and nobody outside your company has to agree to it.
The advance notification behind that consent: what is being bought, the subcontract type, the proposed supplier, the proposed price, certified cost or pricing data where 15.403-4 calls for it, any Cost Accounting Standards disclosure statement, and a negotiation memorandum
FAR 52.244-2(e)(1)Immediate written notice of any action or suit filed, and prompt notice of any claim made, by a subcontractor or vendor of yours that in your opinion may result in litigation related to this contract and for which you may be entitled to reimbursement from the Government
FAR 52.244-2(h)
When it is used
FAR 44.204(a)(1) prescribes it when a cost-reimbursement contract is contemplated, or a letter contract, a fixed-price contract under which unpriced actions are anticipated, a time-and-materials contract, or a labor-hour contract — the last four each expected to exceed the simplified acquisition threshold ($350,000 since 2025-10-01). FAR 44.204(a)(2): use Alternate I for cost-reimbursement contracts of civilian agencies other than the Coast Guard and NASA. FAR 44.204(a)(3) exempts fixed-price architect-engineer contracts and contracts for mortuary services, refuse services, or shipment/storage of personal property where an agency clause on subcontractor facility approval applies. A commercial subcontract runs under FAR 52.244-6, not this clause. Inside the clause, paragraph (b) confines consent on fixed-price contracts to unpriced actions, so a firm-fixed-price order with nothing unpriced has nothing to consent to.
Read closely
(d) is the lighter regime for a company whose purchasing system has been approved, and DFARS 244.302(a) makes that unlikely for a small business: a review is considered only where sales to the Government are expected above $50 million in the next 12 months. (j) takes the consent and notification duties off subcontracts already identified and evaluated during negotiation of your own order. (g) bars a cost-plus-a-percentage-of-cost arrangement at any tier outright.
Alternates
Alt I · JUN 2020
FAR 44.204(a)(2) — cost-reimbursement contracts of civilian agencies other than the Coast Guard and NASA.
Alt I substitutes paragraph (e)(2) so a company with an approved purchasing system still notifies before a cost-plus-fixed-fee award or a large fixed-price one; it moves which awards need the advance notification, not what the notification contains.
The 4 templates that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.244-2, FAR 44.204, DFARS 244.302 and DFARS 252.244-7001 (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.