Samantha Bryant Green, Procurement Officer for North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT)-Public Transportation Division is always looking to streamline processes in innovative ways.  When she began working for NCDOT in 2017, she was tasked with approving every procurement for over 80 transit agencies in the state that receive Federal Transit Administration (FTA) 5311 funding, including everything from office supplies, office functionality, to vehicles and vehicle parts.  She was amazed when she was introduced to ProcurementPRO, a National RTAP web application which makes for “one-stop-shopping” for all FTA certifications and clauses required for FTA funded rural and tribal transit procurement.  She relished the opportunity to make the app even more convenient for her subrecipients, through the creation of a North Carolina State ProcurementPRO 2.0 portal. The state portal also supplies the necessary state documentation subrecipients need to successfully complete their procurements.  This was the first state portal developed using NRTAP’s updated ProcurementPRO 2.0 web app, and she was amazed by how smooth the process was.
 
For North Carolina, the procurement thresholds are different than Federal ones. These thresholds were imbedded into the portal along with two major documents: the North Carolina Purchase & Contract’s Administrative Code and the North Carolina General Statutes. Samantha worked with National RTAP to add the appropriate thresholds and integrate over 100 pages of code and guidelines into ProcurementPRO 2.0, so North Carolina subrecipients are now able to easily comply with both federal and state procurement laws.
 
Samantha estimates that the new state portal will save subrecipients an average of 24-48 hours of time to complete their procurements documents.  She is planning a meeting to introduce the new state portal to transit agencies and train them on its utilization.  “Transit can connect people in more ways than you can ever imagine,” exclaims Samantha, “and creating this new state procurement portal will help to connect them even more.”