Clauses · FAR · Quality and inspection
FAR 52.246-7 Inspection of Research and Development-Fixed-Price
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No paragraph mandates inserting it in a subcontract. Primes mirror it because the acceptance, rejection, price-reduction and latent-defect regime the prime owes the Government has to reach whoever actually did the development — and because (c) puts the prime on the hook to produce the sub's cooperation for a Government inspection at the sub's plant, which it can only demand with a mirror clause.
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.
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 development work under the contract
FAR 52.246-7(a)
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 52.246-7(a)
When it is used
FAR 46.307(a): research and development contracts where (1) the primary objective is delivery of end items OTHER than designs, drawings, or reports, (2) a fixed-price contract is contemplated, and (3) the amount is expected to exceed the SAT ($350k) — unless use of the clause is impractical, in which case 46.309 sends the CO to the short-form clause 52.246-9. 46.307(b) makes it discretionary at or below the SAT. Cost-type R&D takes 52.246-8 instead. No alternates exist.
Read closely
Two paragraphs shape the exposure behind those records. (d) says Government failure to inspect, accept or reject does not relieve responsibility for nonconforming work — silence is not acceptance. And (f) makes acceptance conclusive except for latent defects, fraud, gross mistakes amounting to fraud, or as the contract otherwise says, with no time limit written on that exception; where an article comes back and your plant was not the delivery point, (f)(2) puts freight both ways on you.
The 2 templates that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.246-7, FAR 46.307(a) and FAR 46.309; 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.