SECOND EDITION
Evaluating contractor performance and using the evaluation results to make future award decisions in competitive acquisitions has been a difficult practice to implement across the federal government. The original edition of this handbook identified two necessary conditions for success. One was that agency procedures used to evaluate contractor performance must focus on the same assessment areas and use similar rating scales. The other was that past performance information obtained through the evaluations had to be accessible to source selection officials from a single source.
The second condition has been met. No longer do source selection officials have to obtain access to each agency's past performance database to obtain a copy of the evaluation information on one of the agency's contractors. One system for maintaining and making accessible all contractor performance reports-the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS)-is now in place. The first condition, however, has been only partially achieved. All agencies have procedures for evaluating contractor performance, but the agencies lack uniformity among their assessment areas and rating scales. The lack of uniformity limits the usefulness of the information in PPIRS. This revised edition of the Past Performance Handbook proposes a way to standardize the assessment areas and rating scales without affecting the evaluation system particular to any agency or designed for a particular product or service line.
In spite of the developments to systems of collecting and maintaining performance information, the Government Accountability Office reports that less than a third of required contracts are being evaluated. The underlying problem seems to be relying on only the contracting officer to conduct the evaluations. The evaluation of contractor performance is a responsibility shared with the acquisition team, which includes not just government employees but also the contractors providing the product or service. For this reason, this second edition focuses on making the various team members aware of their roles and providing them with the tools they need.
Contracting officers and contractors will find something of interest in every chapter. The first chapter is directed primarily to contracting officers and the last chapter, to contractors. Source selection officials should focus on the material in Chapters 2 through 6 before taking on the responsibility of evaluating proposals. Officials from technical and program offices, when serving as contracting officer representatives (CORs) or as contracting officer technical representatives (COTRs), should concentrate on the material in Chapters 7 through .
If contracting officers evaluated every contract and order, they would greatly simplify the source selection process and awards would be made to the most qualified offerors. I hope that the Past Performance Handbook will serve as a practical resource for those participating in the evaluation of contractor performance and for those using the evaluation results in source selection.
Joseph W. Beausoleil
July 2010
