Your First Government RFP Response

Posted by Administrator on December 19th, 2007

I frequently get calls from contractors who are interested in contracting with the government, but don’t know where to start. Many contractors worry that their lack of experience with government contracts could keep them from ever breaking into public-sector work. It’s true that performance on past government projects is often considered in a contract award, but a government RFP response from a company with no prior government experience won’t necessarily be disqualified as long as they can demonstrate relevant experience in the private sector.

Past Performance on Government Contracts

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) has established a best practices manual for agencies who plan to collect and use past performance information, which can be found here. Among other things, the document encourages contracting offers to weight past performance pretty heavily in their award decision. Any importance can be assigned to past performance at the contracting officer’s discretion, but as it is an excellent way to determine contractor responsibility, most contracting officers do consider past performance in contractor evaluation.

A company with no experience at all is given a “neutral” past performance rating. In name, this doesn’t appear to be a bad thing, but it’s highly unlikely that a company with a neutral rating will be awarded a contract if there are any other qualified contractors competing. The good news is, private sector contract performance is completely permissible in the past performance section of your RFP response. You may also submit information on key personnel who have performed on similar contracts, work performed as part of a team or joint venture, or government subcontract work your company may have done.

The sample contractor performance report provided by the OFPP is a helpful rubric for how to put together your own past performance evaluations. Performance evaluations on government contracts will be completed by the agency, but their private sector counterparts won’t – you’ll need to put together a reasonable facsimile yourself. It’s important to be as honest as possible when completing the assessment.

The solicitation will let you know how many past performance evaluations should be included in the RFP response. It will typically ask for the 5 to 10 most recent contracts related to the project at hand – a company with less experience than that may want to wait until they have a few more contracts under their belt before pursuing government contracts. Include any comments you feel are necessary to clarify problems that were encountered and how they were solved.

Government RFPs often use different terminology than commercial contracts do. Using the same terminology and language that is used in the RFP and the past performance survey will make your evaluation easier to understand and to compare with your competitors’. A government project is very structured, so emphasizing your process and how you performed on key deliverables is a good idea.

Finally, remember to submit at least 2 contacts for your non-government references. If your company is in the running for the contract award at all, your references will be called! Make sure the contacts know they will be called, and do your best to ensure that the phone number and other information provided are as up-to-date as possible.