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Clauses · FAR · Quality and inspection

FAR 52.246-4 Inspection of Services-Fixed-Price

Does the regulation require it to flow down?

No

There is no mandate to insert the whole clause. Primes mirror it back-to-back for the same reason they mirror 52.246-2: without it, the prime owes the Government free reperformance and a price reduction on services it did not perform, with no matching right against the sub that performed them. Lockheed CorpDoc 3A (2025) shows the mechanics exactly — Note 3 ('insert "and LOCKHEED MARTIN" after "Government"') applies throughout, EXCEPT in paragraphs (e) and (f), where Note 1 ('substitute "LOCKHEED MARTIN" for "Government"') applies. Read that: inspection rights are shared with the Government, but the reperformance demand, the price reduction, the cover procurement and the default termination belong to Lockheed alone.

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 AUG 1996 · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗

What it makes you produce

2 items for your checklist, slowest first.

  1. A program you have to be running

    You are either running it or you are not, and what the prime asks for is the date it started.

    • An inspection system acceptable to the Government, covering the services under the contract

      FAR 52.246-4(b)

  2. Something you write

    Days to weeks, and nobody outside your company has to agree to it.

    • Complete records of all inspection work performed, available to the Government during performance and for as long afterwards as the contract requires

      FAR 52.246-4(b)

When it is used

FAR 46.304: services, or supplies that involve the furnishing of services, when a fixed-price contract is contemplated and the contract amount is expected to exceed the SAT ($350k). At or below the SAT the CO may insert it when it is in the Government's interest. Commercial services run on 52.212-4(a) instead. No alternates exist — the fixed-price-incentive and retroactive-redetermination alternates belong to its supplies sibling 52.246-2, not to this clause. Reaches the sub by prime mirroring at any value; (d) also obligates the prime to require subcontractors to support Government inspection on the sub's own premises.

Read closely

The definition in (a) reads services as workmanship plus any material furnished or used in performing them, so a bad part installed is a nonconforming service. The remedy under (e) is reperformance at no increase in price, or a price reduction where reperformance cannot cure it — which makes the (b) records the only evidence available to answer an assertion that the work was not performed.

The 5 templates that name it, with the line
143CORPDOC 3A — FAR/DFARS Flowdown Provisions for Fixed Price Non-Commercial Items under a DoD Prime ContractLockheed Martinline 291166Northrop Grumman CTM-P-ST-001 — U.S. Government Firm Fixed Price Order (Not for Commercial Products and Services)Northrop Grummanline 2365255GD Mission Systems SCM-TMP-005 — General Provisions, Firm Fixed Price PO under U.S. Government Contract (Non-Commercial)General Dynamicsline 205240L3Harris LGL-50.F1 — General T&C and Flowdown Clauses for Other Than Commercial Products/Services under a U.S. Government ContractL3Harrisline 2091273BAE Systems Inc. USGOVA — FAR/DFARS Flow Down Provisions for Subcontracts/Purchase Orders under a U.S. Government (DoD) Prime ContractBAE Systemsline 812

Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.246-4 and FAR 46.304; RFO Part 46 model text (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.