By Mumin Bashir
Federal past performance decides more bids than most teams expect. How CPARS ratings work, what relevance means, and how to write the volume. Federal past performance is the record of how well your firm delivered earlier work, and evaluators read it as evidence. This guide covers CPARS, relevance and recency, the neutral rating, and how to write the volume. Federal past performance is the government's record of how well your firm delivered earlier work. Evaluators treat that record as evidence, not as a promise. FAR 15.305 calls past performance "one indicator of an offeror's ability to perform the contract successfully." Your proposal does not create the record. It selects from it, explains it, and ties it to the job the agency wants done now. This guide covers where the record lives, what makes a reference count, what to do when you hold none, and how to write the volume. What Federal Past Performance Means Past performance answers one question for the evaluation board. Did this offeror do work like this, recently, and do it well? Three words carry the weight. Relevance asks whether the earlier work resembles the new requirement in scope, size and complexity. Recency asks whether the work happened close enough in time to predict today's behavior. Quality asks how the customer graded the delivery. Experience is a different factor. Experience says you did the work. Past performance says how well you did it. Many solicitations score the two separately, under different criteria and different page limits. Read Section M before you assume they travel together. Where The Record Lives The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System holds most of it. Under FAR 42.1502, agencies prepare an evaluation on contracts and orders above the simplified acquisition threshold. Construction contracts of $900,000 or more and architect-engineer contracts of $45,000 or more carry their own floors. A termination for default triggers an evaluation at any dollar value. The scale runs five levels. Exceptional, Very Good, Satisfactory, Marginal and Unsatisfactory each require a narrative built on objective facts, not adjectives alone. FAR 42.1503 (https://www.acquisition.gov/far/42.1503) gives you 14 calendar days from the notice of availability to comment on a draft evaluation. Use them. A rating you never answered still reads as an uncontested rating three years later. Agencies may use the information for three years after performance ends, and six years for construction and architect-engineer work. Past performance questionnaires sit alongside CPARS. Some agencies still ask your references to complete a form and return it directly. That process has its own failure modes, and we cover them in our guide to the past performance questionnaire (/blog/past-performance-questionnaire-federal-proposal). Reading A CPARS Entry Open your
Federal past performance is the record of how well your firm delivered earlier work, and evaluators read it as evidence. This guide covers CPARS, relevance and recency, the neutral rating, and how to write the volume.
Federal past performance is the government's record of how well your firm delivered earlier work. Evaluators treat that record as evidence, not as a promise. FAR 15.305 calls past performance "one indicator of an offeror's ability to perform the contract successfully." Your proposal does not create the record. It selects from it, explains it, and ties it to the job the agency wants done now. This guide covers where the record lives, what makes a reference count, what to do when you hold none, and how to write the volume. What Federal Past Performance Means Past performance answers one question for the evaluation board. Did this offeror do work like this, recently, and do it well? Three words carry the weight. Relevance asks whether the earlier work resembles the new requirement in scope, size and complexity. Recency asks whether the work happened close enough in time to predict today's behavior. Quality asks how the customer graded the delivery. Experience is a different factor. Experience says you did the work. Past performance says how well you did it. Many solicitations score the two separately, under different criteria and different page limits. Read Section M before you assume they travel together. Where The Record Lives The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System holds most of it. Under FAR 42.1502, agencies prepare an evaluation on contracts and orders above the simplified acquisition threshold. Construction contracts of $900,000 or more and architect-engineer contracts of $45,000 or more carry their own floors. A termination for default triggers an evaluation at any dollar value. The scale runs five levels. Exceptional, Very Good, Satisfactory, Marginal and Unsatisfactory each require a narrative built on objective facts, not adjectives alone. FAR 42.1503 (https://www.acquisition.gov/far/42.1503) gives you 14 calendar days from the notice of availability to comment on a draft evaluation. Use them. A rating you never answered still reads as an uncontested rating three years later. Agencies may use the information for three years after performance ends, and six years for construction and architect-engineer work. Past performance questionnaires sit alongside CPARS. Some agencies still ask your references to complete a form and return it directly. That process has its own failure modes, and we cover them in our guide to the past performance questionnaire (/blog/past-performance-questionnaire-federal-proposal). Reading A CPARS Entry Open your