Past performance narratives for trade contractors that score

Why this section decides close competitions

Trade contractors usually have more relevant work than they know how to describe. A mechanical or electrical firm with fifteen years of hospital and school jobs often submits one sentence per project and a list of owner names, then wonders why a firm with thinner experience scored higher. Evaluators can only credit what the page tells them.

Under the current FAR Overhaul text, past performance must be evaluated in every competitive source selection unless the contracting officer documents why it is not an appropriate factor. Agencies also have room to weight it heavily. So this section often breaks a tie that the technical approach and the price could not. Treat it as an argument, built one project at a time, that you have already done the job being bought.

What evaluators look for

The rule directs agencies to consider the currency and relevance of the information, its source and context, and general trends in the contractor's performance. Three questions sit behind that language.

Question	What it means	What to show
Is it recent?	Finished or ongoing within the window the solicitation states	Start date, completion date, and percent complete for ongoing work
Is it relevant?	Similar in size, scope and complexity to this requirement	Contract value, the type of building or system, the conditions you worked under
How well did it go?	Quality, schedule, cost control, and cooperation with the owner	A measurable result and a reference who will confirm it

Recent and relevant come first. DoD's source selection procedures have described recency as critical to establishing relevance, and the solicitation states the criteria that apply. A strong job from outside the window generally earns nothing, however well it went.

How relevance gets defined

Read the definitions in your solicitation before you choose a single job. In one Air Force procurement reviewed by the Government Accountability Office, the solicitation defined "very relevant" as efforts involving essentially the same magnitude of effort and complexity as required, and "relevant" as efforts involving much of the magnitude and complexity. Performance confidence ratings there ran from substantial and satisfactory down to limited and no confidence, with unknown confidence where a record was too thin to judge.

DoD guidance has listed common aspects of relevance as similarity of product or service, complexity, dollar value, contract type, use of key personnel, and the extent of subcontracting. Those are the dimensions your narrative should address directly. If the solicitation says projects of comparable size are projects over a specific value, state your value next to that number.

What CPARS does, and what you should do about it

The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, or CPARS, is the official source for federal past performance information. Agencies must prepare past performance evaluations for each construction contract of $900,000 or more, and for each construction contract terminated for default regardless of value.

For construction and architect-engineer contracts, agencies must use CPARS information that is within six years of the completion of performance. For other contracts, the window is three years. So a construction rating follows you for a long time.

You get notified when an evaluation is available and have up to 14 calendar days to submit comments, rebuttal or additional information. Set up the CPARS contractor account now, name someone to watch it, and respond every time, including when the rating is good. When a rating is unfair, a calm, factual rebuttal with dates and documents becomes part of the record that later evaluators see.

When you have no federal record

The rules leave real room for firms whose work has been in the private or state and local market. The solicitation must give offerors an opportunity to identify past or current contracts, including federal, state, local government, private sector and other contracts, for efforts similar to the requirement.

An offeror without a record of relevant past performance may not be evaluated favorably or unfavorably on past performance, so a thin record is scored neutrally. But a firm with a good, relevant record will usually beat a neutral one on a tradeoff. So count everything you can legitimately use. The rule also lets agencies consider information about predecessor companies, key personnel who have relevant experience, and subcontractors who will perform major or critical aspects of the requirement.

Joint ventures get their own rule. When a joint venture has no past performance of its own, the past performance of each party to the venture must be considered. And on a lowest price technically acceptable award, past performance, if evaluated at all, is judged only as acceptable or unacceptable, with no comparative ranking among offerors. If a small business would have been in contention but its past performance is found unacceptable, the matter must go to the Small Business Administration for a Certificate of Competency determination.

A trade contractor that has mostly worked as a lower-tier subcontractor has real experience. Describe the specific scope you performed and the general contractor you performed it for, and state your contract value, not the value of the whole building.

Choose the jobs before you write

Solicitations commonly limit you to a small number of references. Build a short list of every job in the recency window, then choose in this order.

• Match the work first. The same kind of building or system beats a bigger job in a different market
• Match the size next. Pick work at or above the size the solicitation describes, in your own contract value
• Match the conditions. Occupied buildings, secure sites, phased outages and remote locations are all forms of relevance
• Favor federal work when it is otherwise comparable, because the evaluator can find a CPARS record
• Check the reference. A slightly less relevant job with a reference who will respond beats a perfect job with a contact who retired
• Check that your best people did the work, and that the proposal names them

Write each narrative in the same order

Evaluators compare projects side by side, so use one format for all of them and keep each to the length the instructions allow. Every narrative needs seven things.

Element	Write this
Owner	Agency or company, the contract number, and the general contractor if you were a subcontractor
Value	Your contract value at award and at completion, with the reason for any change
Dates	Planned and actual start and finish, and percent complete if ongoing
Scope	What your crews did, in numbers: square footage, tons, units, feet of pipe, systems replaced
The problem you solved	The constraint or event that made it hard, and what you did about it
The measurable result	On time, safe hours, zero rework, a phased turnover that held, change orders held to a stated amount
The reference	A named person, current title, phone and email, who has agreed to respond

The problem and the result carry the score

Most narratives stop at the scope, which only shows you were there. The problem you solved shows how you think, and the measurable result shows you finished. Compare two versions of one example job.

• Weak: "We provided HVAC services for a county hospital. The project was completed successfully and the owner was satisfied."

• Strong: "We replaced two chillers serving an occupied surgical wing. Because the wing could lose cooling for no more than eight hours, we staged a temporary chiller, completed each cutover on a single overnight shift, and closed with no surgical cancellations caused by our work. Final value matched the award except for one owner-directed change."

Pull the facts from the job file before anyone starts writing. The awarded value, the final value, the actual finish date and the change order log are all documents you already have, and they keep the narrative accurate. Ask the project manager who ran the job what the hardest week looked like. That conversation usually produces the sentence that wins the point.

The strong version is one sentence longer and worth far more, because every detail in it is something an evaluator can compare to the job being bought. Use numbers only if you can prove them, and keep the backup in the project file.

If something went wrong on a project you are submitting, say so and say what you did. The rule tells offerors to provide information on problems encountered and corrective actions. An honest account of a recovered problem reads far better than a contradiction the evaluator finds elsewhere.

An honest account of a recovered problem reads far better than a contradiction the evaluator finds elsewhere.

Questionnaires and the reference who answers the phone

Many solicitations ask you to send a past performance questionnaire to your references, who return it directly to the contracting officer. Send it as soon as the solicitation is out, and walk the reference through it on a phone call so the date, the contract number and the scope in their answer match your narrative.

Tell each reference exactly which job you listed, send the narrative, and confirm their contact details. Then check back before the deadline. A blank questionnaire is one of the most preventable ways to lose points in this section, and the government will not necessarily tell you which reference said what.

Frequently asked questions