It is a longstanding NIH policy that a principal investigator (PI) needs to seek prior approval from NIH before submitting a grant application with direct costs of $500,000 or more for a single budget year. You now have the option to electronically submit these prior approval requests through eRA Commons. As per current practice, the PI will first reach out via email or phone to the Program Official (PO) at the Institute/Center (IC) to discuss the  request. From there, the PO can then choose to invite the PI to initiate the prior approval request through eRA Commons. Read more about how this works in the October 2016 eRA Items of Interest, and stay tuned for two tutorial videos on this process, coming soon.
Re-Posted from National Institutes of Health Office of Extramural Research, October 31st, 2016