By Mumin Bashir
A practical guide to the past performance questionnaire: who should sign it, how early to ask, and what to do when the form never comes back. The past performance questionnaire shapes how evaluators read your record. Here is how to pick the right references, time the request, and handle a form that never comes back. Most proposal teams treat the past performance questionnaire as an errand. Someone emails the form to a contracting officer six days before the deadline. It comes back late, or half filled, or never. The volume then ships with two references instead of three, and the evaluator reads that gap as risk. That form carries more weight than its one page suggests. Under FAR 15.305(a)(2) (https://www.acquisition.gov/far/part-15), the government weighs currency, relevance, source, and context when it evaluates an offeror's record. A questionnaire signed by the contracting officer on a similar job answers all four at once. A self-written blurb answers none of them. This post covers how to run the step so forms come back complete and on time. What a past performance questionnaire actually is Agencies learn how an offeror performs through two channels. The first is government data the evaluators pull themselves, mostly CPARS (https://cpars.gov/cparsweb/assets/documents/CPARS-Guidance.pdf). The second is what offerors hand over, and the questionnaire lives there. Solicitations attach the form to Section L or Section J. Look for names like "Attachment A, Past Performance Questionnaire" or "Exhibit E." NNSA posts a public example among its solicitation attachments, and the layout holds across most agencies. Expect four blocks of content: - Contract number, period of performance, dollar value, and a short scope description - Adjectival ratings for quality, schedule, cost control, management, and small business use - Narrative boxes asking about problems and the fixes that followed - The reference's name, title, phone, email, and signature Some agencies want the reference to send the form straight to the contracting officer. Others want it inside the volume. Read that instruction twice. Teams lose credit for a strong form that travelled the wrong route. Three rules that shape reference choices CPARS data ages out. FAR 42.1503 (https://www.acquisition.gov/far/42.1503) lets source selection officials use past performance information within three years of completion of performance, and six years for construction and architect-engineer contracts. A services job that closed in 2021 will not help a 2026 bid. Contractors get fourteen calendar days to answer a CPARS evaluation. That same section sets the window for comments and rebuttals, and it requires review above the contracting officer when the two sides disagree. Skip the window and the rating stands as written. No record me
The past performance questionnaire shapes how evaluators read your record. Here is how to pick the right references, time the request, and handle a form that never comes back.
Most proposal teams treat the past performance questionnaire as an errand. Someone emails the form to a contracting officer six days before the deadline. It comes back late, or half filled, or never. The volume then ships with two references instead of three, and the evaluator reads that gap as risk. That form carries more weight than its one page suggests. Under FAR 15.305(a)(2) (https://www.acquisition.gov/far/part-15), the government weighs currency, relevance, source, and context when it evaluates an offeror's record. A questionnaire signed by the contracting officer on a similar job answers all four at once. A self-written blurb answers none of them. This post covers how to run the step so forms come back complete and on time. What a past performance questionnaire actually is Agencies learn how an offeror performs through two channels. The first is government data the evaluators pull themselves, mostly CPARS (https://cpars.gov/cparsweb/assets/documents/CPARS-Guidance.pdf). The second is what offerors hand over, and the questionnaire lives there. Solicitations attach the form to Section L or Section J. Look for names like "Attachment A, Past Performance Questionnaire" or "Exhibit E." NNSA posts a public example among its solicitation attachments, and the layout holds across most agencies. Expect four blocks of content: - Contract number, period of performance, dollar value, and a short scope description - Adjectival ratings for quality, schedule, cost control, management, and small business use - Narrative boxes asking about problems and the fixes that followed - The reference's name, title, phone, email, and signature Some agencies want the reference to send the form straight to the contracting officer. Others want it inside the volume. Read that instruction twice. Teams lose credit for a strong form that travelled the wrong route. Three rules that shape reference choices CPARS data ages out. FAR 42.1503 (https://www.acquisition.gov/far/42.1503) lets source selection officials use past performance information within three years of completion of performance, and six years for construction and architect-engineer contracts. A services job that closed in 2021 will not help a 2026 bid. Contractors get fourteen calendar days to answer a CPARS evaluation. That same section sets the window for comments and rebuttals, and it requires review above the contracting officer when the two sides disagree. Skip the window and the rating stands as written. No record me