Vermont statute (1 V.S.A. § 317a) requires that records shall not be destroyed, given away, sold, discarded, or damaged unless specifically authorized by law or under a schedule approved by the state archivist pursuant to 3 V.S.A. § 117(a)(5). This includes the records from your funded project.
The Vermont State Archives and Records Administration under the Secretary of State’s office assists public agencies in meeting their record-keeping requirements by collaborating with public agencies to develop and implement records retention and disposition policies (also known as record schedules) that are justified and defensible if challenged.
In addition to conforming to legal requirements, records management is also necessary because:
• federally funded programs come with a number of audit requirements; and
• projects that may be refinanced need to demonstrate that they complied with the federal requirements.
Start your records keeping efforts early in the project to ensure the project is legally defensible.
We recommend keeping a project binder. The binder can be organized by chronology or by document type.
If you are organizing by chronology, it's good to create a log page in the front of the binder that serves as an index of what's in the binder.
If you are sorting by document type, then we recommend getting divider tabs. Document types might include:
- invoices
- cancelled checks
- pay requisitions
- meeting minutes
- letters
- contracts & amendments
- cut sheets
- data
- test results
- Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) documentation
- American Iron and Steel (AIS) documentation
- Davis-Bacon documentation
- Fiscal Sustainability Plan
- Cost and Effectiveness Certification
- Request for Qualifications advertisement and selection documentation
In addition there are likely to be several large documents that will need to be stored:
- Preliminary Engineering Report
- Plans, Specifications, and Record Drawings
- Operation and Maintenance Manuals