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For better or worse, agencies are given broad discretion in how they evaluate past performance. Here are some key things to consider.

A government agency’s evaluation of your past performance can often be the difference between winning or losing your bid. In fact we are increasingly receiving RFPs in which the only written material supplied to the government are past performance references.

When we do a contract for the government, the agency is obligated to rate our performance in different areas from 5 to 1 (excellent, very good, satisfactory, marginal, or unacceptable). These reference ratings are then stored in a web-based application called the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS).

We recently did an RFP where they listed elements from their PWS (Performance Work Statement, which is essentially a list of work you’re supposed to do). We were required to take those PWS elements and map them to the information from the past performance reference that we were giving. Then they would go and consult CPARS, which means the contract in your reference had to have been in place for a year, and the CPARS entry already approved.

For example, one of the PWS elements was project management. We were required to give a written response that yes we do project management and we’ve done it on a past project. Then we had to go the contract documents for that past project, to the actual PDF of the signed contract documents, and put an electronic sticky note where the contract states we were required to do project management reports.

In the end, we submitted 400+ pages of old contract documents with electronic sticky notes on various pages, along with detailed notes in the RFP about where to refer to these pages in the past performance contract.

There is a lot more movement towards using past performance as the only award criteria, and so you really need to focus as a vendor on disputing your CPARS if they’re not appropriated, understanding your rating criteria, and working directly with your CORs and KOs to make sure everything gets into your past performance record.

For better or worse, agencies are given broad discretion in how they evaluate past performance. As such, it is critical that when working with the federal government that contractors understand not only what steps they should take to cultivate and utilize positive past performance, but also the steps they should take to defend their past performance from attacks. Here are some key items for your team to discuss:

  • general rules governing past performance evaluations;
  • ways in which a prime contractor can utilize different sources of past performance information;
  • best practices for obtaining positive CPARS ratings; and
  • how and when to challenge negative CPARS ratings.
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