SELLER PAST PERFORMANCE CYCLE

The seller past performance cycle is shown in Figure 2-7. Sellers that desire to perform well collect and use past and current performance information to stay informed about their performance, monitor and take corrective action as needed to improve performance, measure progress against goals, and revise measures and goals as needed. They also collect and manage past performance information for more purposes than just using it in their next proposal, such as for employee feedback or as part of a performance improvement program. This focus on continually improving performance, combined with ensuring that performance records reflect positively on their past performance, meshes with the government goal of using past performance information to improve contractor performance.

Figure 2-7: Seller Past Performance Cycle

Collection

Sellers collect past performance information from a variety of sources, including debriefings (both unsuccessful offers and awarded contract proposal debriefings), program reviews, CPARS reports, and customer satisfaction surveys and programs, as well as that information collected by staff performing or monitoring their own firm’s performance.

Debriefings

Debriefings are feedback from a buyer to a seller when a contract decision is made. Typically this is a contract award decision, and the seller may or may not be the awardee; other decisions by the government also can provide the basis for a debriefing, such as exclusion from the competitive range or otherwise being excluded from competition before an award. A FAR precept is that debriefings have to be requested by the bidder within very specific and tight timelines. For preaward debriefing requests, the party requesting the debriefing can ask to be debriefed immediately or to be debriefed after the contract award is made.

The bidder should know what it wants to learn and wants to do in a preaward debriefing. If the bidder is interested in taking an action based on the preaward decision, it is likely to be in its best interest to request a preaward debriefing. However, if the bidder is interested in learning as much as possible about the eventual award decision but is unlikely to take immediate action, it probably should request a postaward debriefing. That way, more can be learned about the source selection decision.

Debriefings are an important part of past performance information collection. Sellers should take full advantage of every debriefing opportunity: They should request one at every opportunity, ask for and take advantage of in-person debriefings, and come to them fully prepared. Coming fully prepared means reviewing the solicitation and submitted proposal along with any discussion or clarification rounds that have occurred. Sellers should be aware of the varied viewpoints on the buyer side and seek direct participation and feedback from each viewpoint in the debriefing. These viewpoints include the contracting officer, the source selection authority, the technical evaluation team lead, or other evaluation teams (management, past performance, price, or other). Preparation includes coming to the conversation with a collection of questions and advance preparation by the direct participants (from the seller) in the debriefing. Feedback during a debriefing can and should include feedback on the competitive field, on the evaluation process, on the proposal, and on the rating of the proposal. Questions for consideration include:

• Was the successful offeror already performing work for the agency?

• What other firms are on the successful offeror’s team?

• Who were the other offerors?

• What did the price and technical score distribution look like?

• Please describe the process by which evaluation scores were derived by the government evaluators.

• Please describe the makeup and composition of the evaluation team.

• Please provide a detailed breakdown of our technical score by proposal section, including detail on strengths and weaknesses.

• Please provide specific feedback on the subcontractor plan rating.

• Please describe the perceived strengths and weaknesses in our proposed incumbent personnel retention strategy.

• Please describe the perceived strengths and weaknesses in our proposed transition plan.

• What needed improvement in our proposal, or in the government assessment of the risk associated with an award to our firm; how could we have mitigated this perceived risk?

Company experience

Management approach

Facilities or geographic coverage

Key personnel

Proposed labor mix and utilization

Proposed technical solution

Qualifications of proposed personnel

Past performance.

As can be seen in this list of possible questions, a debriefing is an opportunity to obtain feedback on not only how the past performance was perceived and rated but also on other aspects of the firm’s proposal that might affect how the firm is viewed.

Program Reviews

The term program review is used here to mean any review, formal or otherwise, conducted by an agency or client on the progress of a project or program. In projects and programs involving contracted support, it is normal for the review to include comments on contractor performance. These evaluations of performance are a potential collection point for a seller of how a particular buyer or agency views its performance.

These views of contractor performance are not likely to be stored in a searchable repository of past performance information, but they could form the basis for close-at-hand information about contractor performance or purposeful collection of past performance information at the activity or agency level on a specific project or program.

CPARS Reports

It is in a firm’s best interest to proactively manage its CPARS reports. Firms are provided limited access to CPARS via individual, named account holders. A firm needs to assign an account access person who actively monitors postings and associated email notifications. Using an organizational mailbox with multiple recipients to ensure that email notifications are received and acted upon is useful if accountability for action is not lost in doing so. A firm should know which projects it has ongoing and when CPARS reports are or could be completed and should prompt its clients to complete the reports, to fully document the firm’s performance, and to comment appropriately on the filed reports. It behooves a firm to collect and store its CPARS reports for its own use.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer satisfaction monitoring can be done in a variety of ways. Firms can and should collect customer satisfaction information on a regular, recurring basis. Conventional wisdom regarding this collection method is that the best results are achieved by using a neutral or objective third party to solicit and collect customer satisfaction data in a manner that makes it relatively easy for the customer to provide meaningful feedback. The methods to do this are varied and, compared to the highly scripted nature of CPARS, can be easily tailored to the type and depth of feedback sought, the disposition of the customer toward responding to queries, and the retention and dissemination of the information collected. Customer satisfaction and perceptions can be collected from existing, past, prospective, or representative customers.

Staff Collection

An often overlooked means of collecting past performance information and both client and self-perceptions of current performance is from a source that is perhaps closest to the client on a regular basis: the staff performing on current projects. Collection opportunities include normal daily interactions, the submission and review of recurring status reports, and program or project reviews. Firms that perform government work often default to or rely upon the government to specify the frequency and format of the program and project reviews where this type of information can arise and feedback collection can occur. Firms are well served by not missing these opportunities and by taking the initiative to schedule and conduct regular reviews, submit and follow up on performance feedback via recurring reports, and drive agendas during interactions with clients to obtain performance feedback with adequate specificity to inform service delivery and the management of client perceptions.

Interpretation

Unlike the government buyer, the seller is not guided by rule and regulation in the evaluation of its own past performance. Our choice of the term interpretation as opposed to evaluation reflects this distinction. (Evaluation of past performance information is covered in greater detail in Chapter 5.) The seller can choose to evaluate its own past performance against a grading scale or schema. For the purposes of proposals, it should evaluate its past performance information to select the past performance citations to use in a particular proposal, to choose whether to bid on a solicitation, and to determine how to best present its past performance information.

The seller needs to interpret the past performance information it receives, seeks out, collects, or otherwise encounters. This interpretation includes making sense of the information, both for itself and with the aim of predicting how others (e.g., buyers) will make sense of and evaluate the information—particularly for relevancy and scoring against proposal and CPARS evaluation criteria.

Of primary consideration in interpretation by a seller is the removal or overcoming of biases in its analysis. Collection sources and methods or channels each come with their own inherent lean toward a particular view or perspective. One bias that is pervasive and difficult to overcome is the strong emotional response of the party receiving feedback or past performance information when its own “blood, sweat, and tears” went into delivery of the goods or services. Additionally, the perceived value of the delivery team is highly likely to be graded, judged, compensated, or in some way affected by the nature of the past performance information it receives. Under these circumstances, it is human nature to selectively listen, to not be objective, to filter information, or to consider explaining or forming a retort instead of actively listening when confronted with feedback and information about past performance. This is particularly true when that feedback or information is critical or seemingly prepared and provided with little thought or effort.

Acknowledging, then, that it is difficult to predict how others will evaluate one’s past performance, and also acknowledging persistent biases and filters between a performance and looking back at that performance through past performance information, how can the information be interpreted? One way is to submit it to a proxy for the eventual or actual evaluator(s), such as a person with similar attributes (e.g., used to work at the buyer agency, served in a role same as or similar to an expected evaluator, had similar experiences as an expected evaluator) to gain an understanding of the actual evaluator’s potential disposition and considerations. Another method is to seek out direct feedback from prospective evaluators at times other than during a proposal evaluation. This feedback can be sought during formal and informal project and program performance reviews, during and following submission of status reports, in advance of a CPARS evaluation point, and during data collection as part of a customer satisfaction program.

Storage and Retention

Seller retention and storage of past performance information is not prescribed by any governing or regulatory guidance outside of the firm itself; therefore, there is a range of ways this is accomplished, from doing nothing in particular to store or manage past performance information to tightly controlling the storage and retention of past performance information using all manner of archiving and retrieval systems and topologies. This topic is covered in greater detail in Chapter 4.

Use

One way to think about how a firm manages its past performance is through the lens of an equation or model. Heskett, Sasser, and Schlesinger provide an equation for customer value (1997):

They use this equation to illustrate that value to the customer is a function of both results achieved and quality of service offset against the price and other costs associated with acquiring the service. In this model, managing past performance means seeking an understanding of the results, quality, price, and costs as seen by the customer to increase value to the customer and thus the value the firm provides in the marketplace. Another model describing how a firm manages its past performance is called a maturity model (see Chapter 4).

Regardless of the means used to analyze how a firm does or should manage its past performance, the best and highest use of past performance information is to improve performance. Subordinate uses that support this primary objective include improving feedback, improving the documentation of past performance, and improving proposals.

Improve Performance

Excellence in performance is an ongoing endeavor. It is not a static position that can be achieved and then the means of achieving it forgotten about. It is a dynamic state requiring constant improvement guided by, among other things, customer perceptions, observations, and feedback. Performance improvement efforts of merit include measures of performance to assess performance, to set direction and goals, and to measure and monitor progress. Past performance information can serve as an important component of these measures of performance.

A firm can decide by itself that it is an “excellent” performer, and this self-appraisal may even have some merit and generate strong convictions and beliefs about the value of the firm’s products and services. However, in a crowded competitive field like the government contracting market, viable competitors are always present and it is not a firm’s own opinion of its value that matters, but the perception, judgments, and opinions of its customers and prospective customers. Current customers are already generating past performance information about a particular firm that prospective customers will use to evaluate its past performance—while making decisions of great importance to the firm. It is toward the improvement of these perceptions and judgments that the time and energy spent managing past performance is directed. There are two elements at play here: managing and improving perceptions of performance, including the documentation of those perceptions, and using this information to improve performance itself, thus improving future perceptions of performance.

Improve Feedback

A critical element of improving performance is robust and objective feedback from a variety of sources, particularly clients, including past, current, and prospective clients. For a large number of government contractors, past performance information represents the only customer satisfaction information they receive outside of direct feedback during performance. Past performance information provided by government agencies is also a low- or no-cost means of receiving customer feedback. Active involvement and management of this information flow is an important element of obtaining actionable customer feedback on performance.

An example of how a firm can actively manage and participate in this feedback loop to improve the feedback received is to perform self-assessments before a CPARS assessment is due, since on an ongoing project, the due dates for CPARS performance assessment by the customer are known. Well in advance of this due date, the firm can take a CPARS form, prepopulate the pro forma contract and administrative blocks, and use the elements in the form to complete a self-assessment of its own performance, assigning ratings it feels are appropriate for its own performance. The next step is to schedule a time with the rating official, most likely the contracting officer’s representative, to go over this self-assessment. The purpose of this session is to have a frank and open discussion regarding performance and to identify areas where the government evaluator sees a need for (or there is room for) improvement. The firm, armed with this information, can then use the remaining time between the discussion and the end of the rating period to address these areas and improve the evaluation against what it would have been had the feedback session not been held.

Improve Documentation of Past Performance

People are more inclined to act than they are to write about an action—particularly the actions of others—and documentation of past performance is essentially writing retrospectively about the actions of others. Human nature runs counter to efforts to improve documentation, as evidenced by low rates of completed CPARS reporting. Sellers in the past performance cycle must overcome this tendency in order to improve their documentation of past performance.

There are a number of means to achieve this goal, some of which include increasing the number of channels and types of feedback received, making CPARS reports more comprehensive and more complete, and increasing the posting of CPARS comments by the seller. The seller must take advantage of every opportunity to “complete the story” in a CPARS report by fully using the comments section or reminding government clients to complete CPARS reports. See Chapter 4 for specifics on how a firm can institutionalize these actions by describing them in plain language and assigning them as specific responsibilities to ensure they are accomplished.

Having an active customer satisfaction program is one way to increase the number of channels and types of feedback received. A customer satisfaction program can be tailored to elicit feedback from those that will respond to phone conversations but not to email queries, for instance. Elicitation and capture of customer quotes and awards or “attaboys” is another example of a concentrated effort to open up and encourage additional types of (positive) feedback that can be incorporated into past performance documentation. CPARS reports allow approximately one page of contractor comments and a generous allotment of 60 days in which to complete the comments. Few firms take the time to use these comment sections. Many equate the use of the comments sections to disputing the ratings received, which is neither their stated purpose nor the only way to make use of them. The comments section can be used to complete the story of each record, the story being a complete, stand-alone description of all aspects of the performance during the rating period that can then be understood by a wider audience relying upon this past performance documentation during evaluations of past performance.

Improve Proposals

We have identified improving performance as the primary objective of managing past performance. During contract performance, past performance information that will be used for bids and proposals is generated. Improved proposals generally result in more opportunities for performance. Thus we have established a self-reinforcing, positive feedback loop in which better performance results in more past performance information that, if managed well, results in improved proposals which in turn result in better performance. How past performance information can be best managed to improve proposals is covered in greater detail in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.