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Office of Contractor Assurance

OCA Charter

The Office of Contractor Assurance (OCA) provides oversight of LBNL’s management systems and operating processes to ensure that compliance, operational support for science, best management practices, and continuous improvement are achieved at LBNL. The OCA is a fully independent and internal assurance organization, and is authorized to have unrestricted access (as appropriate) to personnel, records, and other information sources necessary to carry out its duties. 

At the direction of the Director of Institutional Assurance, the Office of Contractor Assurance manages processes that assure UC and LBNL management that operations are effective and efficient, financial reporting is reliable, and both are in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and contractual requirements. These assurance systems are designed to identify deficiencies and improvement opportunities to responsible managers, and foster continuous improvement by supporting corrective action development and implementation and sharing of lessons learned.


This office:

  1. Provides a structure for oversight and assurance activities.
  2. Implements and maintains institutional performance assurance programs consistent with good management practices and contractual and DOE requirements.  These programs are composed of the following elements:

    1. Performance measures.  Establish and maintain measures to monitor all DOE and contract performance evaluation measures, as well as Laboratory and Division-specific performance of vital operations. Measures will be linked to the DOE mission and contract and used to monitor internal controls, trends, and progress toward our deliverables.
    2. Assessments and Reviews.  Develop comprehensive assessment programs for Laboratory operations; including self-assessments, LBNL peer reviews, and external reviews.
    3. Issues Management.  Establish an issues management program for all Laboratory operations that allows for managing through resolution and determining the cause of issues that result from self-identification and assessment, and developing and tracking corrective actions that prevent recurrence of the same or similar issues.  These data will be entered into a single Corrective Action Tracking System (CATS).
    4. Continuous improvement, lessons learned and best practices.  Maintain a Laboratory-wide lessons learned and best practices program to provide a systematic approach towards continuous improvement.  Develop and evaluate lessons learned and best practices and distribute them to appropriate parties, including Divisions, the Laboratory, and the DOE complex.
  3. Regularly reports to Laboratory management, UC Office of the President, and DOE the issues and trends identified from oversight and assurance activities.
  4. Coordinates and participates in investigating incidents of significant concern to Laboratory management.  Analyzes causes and extent of condition of these incidents and reports results to Laboratory and Division managements.
  5. Coordinates review, policy development, and implementation of contractual (including contract deliverables and DOE rules, orders, directives, and similar policy documents) and regulatory requirements.
  6. Serves as the Independent Point of Contact for evaluating 10CFR parts 830 and 835 Price-Anderson Amendments Act issues and deficiencies.
  7. Serves as the independent Point of Contact for managing and overseeing the institutional Quality Assurance Program.
  8. Serves as the independent Point of Contact for managing and overseeing the institutional Conduct of Operations Program.