Past performance is evaluated by the government during most competitive federal acquisitions these days, and it often can be the most significant factor that the government evaluates. While getting good responses from your references is important, too many companies don’t pay enough attention to establishing how relevant their past performance is to achieving the highest score possible for their past performance. And when your time is limited to just 30 days to write your technical proposal and develop your pricing, past performance gets less attention than it needs. Here are a few things you can do to get your past performance write ups ready in advance of the solicitation being issued.
Almost every procurement that is going to evaluate past performance requires the same or very similar information for each reference you are going to submit:
- Contract #: (If this is a commercial contract, you probably won’t have a #, so just enter NA or “Commercial Contract”
- Procuring Agency/Customer Name and Address: This is the name of the agency or the company who contracted with your company, along with their complete address
- Point of Contact (POC), including Name, title, phone # and email address: This is NOT your company’s POC, but rather the person at your referenced organization that the government can (and will) contact for information on how well you performed for them. They will often specify that the POC must be the Contracting Officer, the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR), or the Program Manager. I suggest when you are doing this in advance that you gather at least two POCs names, titles, phone #’s and email addresses, and make certain they are current and accurate.
- Period of Performance: You usually need to give at least the month/year that the contract started and the month/year that the contract ended or is going to end, assuming all options are exercised.
- Total contract value: This is a dollar amount for the total estimated amount of your contract, including all options if exercised. That means if you are currently in year 1 of a five-year contract (base plus four option years) and the yearly amount is $5 million, your total contract value (including all options) is $25 million.
- Brief description of the effort: Although total contract value can play into a relevance determination (the “size” of the effort), relevance is mostly determined here. The definition of relevance is (generally) that the size, scope and complexity of the referenced effort is equal to or greater than the effort for which you are competing. The best way to write this section is using your referenced contract’s Statement of Work (SOW), and at this point you’ll hope it’s a good, accurate description of what you do for them. I recommend taking each task to be performed described in your SOW and summarizing in detail what you actually do under the contract. For example, let’s say you are competing for a contract that will require you to manage multiple task orders at multiple locations concurrently throughout the United States and provide facilities maintenance for hospitals at each location. Your referenced contract required exactly the same thing, so your SOW probably includes some of the following:
Project Management. “Under this contract, we were awarded 5 task orders requiring facilities maintenance for Army and Navy hospitals at 18 locations throughout the US, including Jacksonville, FL; Beaufort, SC; Knoxville, TN; and Presidio, CA. Maintenance included HVAC, boiler operations, high voltage electrical, and plumbing in medical treatment environments. All services were required to meet Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO) standards.” You get the idea. Specifics and details that were important to the agency that awarded you your referenced contract are often going to be the same key words that the evaluators will be looking for that are in the SOW currently being competed. For your baseline past performance information, put in EVERYTHING. Do this for every element of each SOW, no matter how insignificant it might be. Include Performance Standards for example or Data Requirements. Nothing is too small to be included here. Once you get the solicitation, you can see what areas are important to your potential customer, and tailor your write up to emphasize the areas in your referenced write up that match your targeted opportunity.
One more tip: Be sure and look at the terminology in the targeted SOW, and make sure you use their words in the description instead of the original words. For example, if the new SOW says “Everyone will be happy” and your referenced SOW said that “everyone shall be glad” then in your write up, change it to “happy.” Don’t change the meaning, just make the terminology familiar to the evaluator. Don’t make the evaluator have to decide if “happy” and “glad” are the same thing.
If you keep this information up to date for all of your contracts, whether government or commercial, it can save you a lot of time at a point when time is critical to you. As your points of contact change as you perform your contracts, don’t forget to update your past performance database so you don’t have to scramble at the last minute!