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Especially after reform in contracting, past performance has
become the section that often decides who wins or loses the contract. The dozens
of proposals we have worked during the past three years have usually assigned 30
- 40% of the total evaluation score to past performance. Past performance can
assume an even more important position in the proposal, how-ever, because no
Source Selection committee is going to awarda contract to a vendor lacking
strong past performance.
The key questions are these: (1) How complete is the past
performance archive? (2) How is the process of preparing thepast performance
going to be managed? And (3) who is going to write the past performance?
It has been our experience that the number of companies that
maintain an up-to-date past performance archive is small. The usual case is that
the past performance citations are outof date, incomplete, or non-existent.
The first step in the job of producing a responsive past
performance section is to assess the requirements and plan accordingly. How many
past performance citations are required? What are all the technical / experience
areas thatmust be addressed by the citations? How many of the require-ments will
need to be addressed by citations from subcontractor firms? Given the situation,
how many person-hours of labor will be necessary to complete the past
performance section? Which citations are long-lead items requiring advance
planning because of the need to interface with subcontractors or develop
information lost from corpo-rate memory?
The question asking who will write the citations can have
different answers. Occasionally, there will be project or program managers with
the time and ability to write at least a first-draft response on some of the
citations. Usually, most of the work will default to the editor(s) assigned to
take responsibility for the past performance section.
If the past performance section is complex at all, it will
behelpful to begin with an audit of the solicitation require-ments. Determine
what are the important elements of experience required to do the job. Format the
past performance so that each citation addresses as many parts of the spec as
possible. At the end, audit the body of the citations to ensure that you have
conclusively demonstrated the capability to do all parts of the spec.
Our experience has been that, at least 90% of past performance
citations will have to be edited to a lesser or greater extent. Usually, the
citations are out of date, incomplete, or fail to adequately address the
requirements ofthe job being proposed. Consequently, it is incumbent on
thebidder to edit the citations as appropriate to tell an effective story.
Usually, you can plan on expending at least four hours per
citation, if not double that, given average field conditions.The editors will
sometimes be lucky in having one or two citations that are already close to the
spec. However, it ismore frequently the case to have citations that require
complete reformatting. Often this work will require the editors to interview the
cognizant project / program managerson the phone, and just finding these
individuals frequently requires a significant expenditure of time. In cases
where these managers have left the company, the editors may need touse their
creative imagination.
Many solicitations require the bidder to provide references in
the past performance section, including the name and phonenumber of a customer
contact person who can be called. It has been our experience that, for every
proposal, any references provided need to be checked. Sometimes, it is a
challenge to even find the references, as they have changed job, or agency.
Consultants are good to do this, because thereferences will speak more candidly
to the consultant than tothe contractor. Any bidder who skips this step is
courtingdisaster, as companies sometimes do not have an accurate understanding
of their customer opinion.
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OCI provides best-in-industry value proposal service. For more
information, visit us at http://www.orgcom.com or call 1-703-689-9600.
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