Past Performance

Two proposals rated Exceptional. Two past performance ratings of Substantial Confidence. A price gap of nearly $15 million between the two offerors. On that record, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) did what source selection authorities routinely do. It declared the offerors essentially equal on the non-price factors and awarded to the lower-priced firm. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained the disappointed offeror’s protest, because the past performance findings that made the two firms look equivalent could not bear the weight the agency placed on them. The case is Veros Real Estate Solutions, LLC, B-423965.2, B-423965.3, B-423965.4 (Comp. Gen. July 22, 2026), and it carries an outsize practical lesson: An agency may not credit an offeror with work the offeror did not perform, and it may not paper over a relevancy determination with conclusory adjectives. For contractors competing in best value procurements where technical ratings bunch at the top, the holding warrants close study.

Continue Reading Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due: GAO Sustains Protest Where VA Credited the Awardee for the Government’s Own Work

Contractor past performance evaluations are important factors in source selection decisions under Parts 8 and 15 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”), and they can easily make or break a contractor’s federal customer base. Especially vulnerable are contractors competing in Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (“LPTA”) procurements, where a bad past performance rating can make contractors ineligible due to an “unacceptable” technical rating even though they may offer the lowest price. The submission by Government contracting officials of a contractor’s performance evaluation to the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (“CPARS”) is required in most instances; however, the contractor’s remedies for correcting poor performance evaluations due to mistakes and material omissions by the evaluator are limited in both time and scope. And as the DoD’s Inspector General (“IG”) has repeatedly pointed out, most recently in its May 9, 2017 report, Summary of Audits on Assessing Contractor Performance (noting a large percentage of DoD performance assessment reports are late and not prepared correctly and accurately), mistakes often happen. Contractors looking to sustain their business in the federal marketplace need to be properly armed with the weapons available to challenge poor performance evaluations when the agency gets it wrong.
Continue Reading Sparring with CPARS: Some Tips on Avoiding and Curing Bad Past Performance Evaluations That Can Haunt and Jeopardize a Government Contractor’s Business for Years