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Complete guide to building past performance from scratch for defense contractors. Covers 10 proven strategies — subcontracting, GSA schedules, SBIR/STTR awards, mentor-protégé programs — plus CPARS management, documentation best practices, and AI-powered past performance retrieval.
Cabrillo Club
Editorial Team · February 24, 2026 · 18 min read
Building past performance is the single most frustrating barrier new and small defense contractors face when pursuing federal contracts. The catch-22 is real: you need past performance to win contracts, but you need contracts to build past performance. Every year, technically capable companies lose bids not because they lack skill, but because they lack a documented record of successful government work.
This guide breaks down exactly how past performance is evaluated, why it carries so much weight in Department of Defense procurements, and — most importantly — provides 10 proven strategies for building a credible past performance portfolio from zero. Whether you are a startup entering the defense industrial base or an established commercial company pivoting to federal work, these approaches will help you compete against incumbents with decades of contract history.
Understanding the evaluation framework is essential before you can build a strategy to compete within it. Past performance evaluation in federal procurement is governed primarily by FAR 15.305(a)(2) and FAR Subpart 42.15, which establishes the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS).
FAR 15.305(a)(2) states that past performance evaluation "shall" be a factor in negotiated procurements. It is not optional for contracting officers — they must assess it. The regulation requires agencies to evaluate:
Contracting officers are directed to evaluate the "currency and relevance" of past performance information as a predictor of future performance. This language gives evaluators significant discretion in determining what counts.
The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) is the government's official database for recording contractor performance. After contract completion (or annually for multi-year contracts), the contracting officer or contracting officer's representative (COR) completes an evaluation covering:
Each area receives an adjectival rating, and the overall assessment follows the same scale.
| Rating | Definition | What It Means for Future Bids |
|---|---|---|
| Exceptional | Performance significantly exceeded requirements with no quality issues | Strongest possible discriminator — evaluators view this as low risk |
| Very Good | Performance exceeded some requirements with no significant quality issues | Competitive rating that will support most bids |
| Satisfactory | Performance met requirements | Neutral — will not differentiate you from competitors |
| Marginal | Performance did not meet some requirements | Red flag that evaluators will scrutinize in future proposals |
| Unsatisfactory | Performance did not meet most requirements | Effectively disqualifying for similar work |
The critical insight: A "Satisfactory" rating, while not negative, does nothing to help you win. In competitive procurements where multiple offerors have Very Good or Exceptional ratings, Satisfactory blends in with having no record at all. This is why performance management — not just performance — matters.
Many new contractors assume that offering the lowest price will win the contract. This is wrong for most DoD procurements.
Under FAR 15.101-1 (Best Value Tradeoff Process), contracting officers can select a higher-priced offer if the technical and past performance advantages justify the cost premium. In practice, past performance regularly trumps price because:
Risk reduction drives decisions. DoD program managers have seen low-price bidders fail to deliver, causing schedule delays that cost the government far more than the price savings. Past performance is the government's primary tool for assessing execution risk.
The GAO backs it up. Government Accountability Office protest decisions consistently uphold source selection decisions where agencies selected higher-priced offerors based on superior past performance. The legal standard is well-established.
Set-aside contracts amplify the effect. In small business set-asides under NAICS codes common to defense (541330, 541511, 541512, 541519, etc.), the competitive pool is smaller, and past performance differences between offerors are often the deciding factor.
DoD-specific emphasis. DFARS supplements to the FAR often add past performance subfactors specific to defense work, including performance on classified contracts, compliance with cybersecurity requirements (CMMC maturity), and experience with DoD-specific acquisition processes.
For new contractors, this means the investment in building past performance — even at a loss on early contracts — pays for itself many times over in future competitive positioning. Winning your first federal contracts requires a deliberate past performance strategy, not just technical capability.
This is the single most effective strategy for building past performance quickly. When you perform as a subcontractor on a prime contract, you gain:
How to execute: Identify prime contractors working in your capability area through SAM.gov contract award data. Attend industry days and pre-proposal conferences where primes recruit subcontractors. Offer a competitive price for your first 2-3 subcontracts — the past performance record is more valuable than maximum profit margin on early work.
Key consideration: Ensure your subcontract is large enough and visible enough to be cited as past performance. A $15,000 subcontract on a $50 million program is unlikely to be meaningful. Aim for subcontracts where your scope is clearly delineated and measurable.
A GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contract is not past performance in itself, but it creates a streamlined path to winning task orders that generate past performance. Government buyers use GSA Schedules for simplified acquisitions, and the lower barrier to entry means less emphasis on past performance in the initial award.
Once you hold a GSA Schedule, you can compete for task orders through GSA eBuy and agency-specific procurements. Each completed task order becomes a past performance reference.
Timeline: GSA Schedule approval takes 4-8 months. Plan to win your first task orders within 6-12 months of schedule award. Within 18 months, you should have 2-3 completed task orders with verifiable performance records.
Federal contracting officers can and do consider state and local government contracts as relevant past performance, particularly when the scope of work is similar to the federal requirement. Many state and local procurements have lower past performance thresholds and can serve as your first government references.
Target states with significant defense infrastructure — Virginia, Maryland, Texas, California, Colorado, Florida — where state agencies procure services similar to federal defense needs. Cybersecurity assessments, IT modernization, engineering services, and professional consulting at the state level translate directly to federal past performance narratives.
The SBA Mentor-Protege Program pairs experienced federal contractors (mentors) with small businesses (proteges) in a formal relationship that can include joint venture arrangements. Under a mentor-protege joint venture:
This is one of the few mechanisms that explicitly allows a new company to use another company's past performance while simultaneously building its own. The teaming agreement structure between mentor and protege must be carefully documented to ensure the protege receives proper credit.
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) awards are federal contracts that require zero past performance to win. Evaluation criteria focus on technical innovation, the principal investigator's qualifications, and commercialization potential.
Phase I awards ($50K-$250K) fund feasibility studies. Phase II awards ($500K-$1.5M) fund prototype development. Both generate legitimate federal past performance records. More importantly, SBIR/STTR awards signal to federal evaluators that your technology has been independently assessed and funded by a government agency — a powerful credibility marker.
DoD SBIR topics are published at DODSBIRSTTR.mil and span every defense technology domain from AI/ML to hypersonic materials.
Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts provide a framework for issuing multiple task orders over a multi-year period. Securing a spot on an IDIQ vehicle — even without immediate task order wins — positions you to compete for individual orders where past performance requirements may be lower than on standalone contracts.
Government-wide IDIQ vehicles to target include:
Each task order won and completed under an IDIQ vehicle adds to your past performance portfolio.
FAR 15.305(a)(2) does not limit past performance to government contracts. Commercial work that is relevant in scope, magnitude, and complexity can be cited as past performance. The key word is "relevant" — you must draw clear parallels between commercial projects and the federal requirement.
For example, a company that has built secure cloud infrastructure for Fortune 500 financial services firms can present that work as relevant past performance for a DoD cloud migration contract. The technical challenges are analogous, and the security requirements, while different in framework, demonstrate similar rigor.
Documentation is critical. Commercial clients do not issue CPARS ratings, so you need client reference letters, project completion certificates, performance metrics, and clearly articulated scope descriptions to substitute for the structured government evaluation format.
Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), and nonprofit organizations supporting government missions can provide work that federal evaluators consider relevant. While this should not be your primary strategy, it fills gaps while other approaches mature.
Contributing to open-source projects used by DoD (such as Platform One or Iron Bank container hardening) also generates a traceable record of work that demonstrates both technical competence and familiarity with defense IT environments.
If your company qualifies for the SBA 8(a) program (socially and economically disadvantaged small business), you gain access to sole-source contracts up to $4.5 million for services. Sole-source awards have minimal competitive pressure and can be awarded based on technical capability rather than past performance history. Each 8(a) contract completed builds your record for competing in full-and-open procurements.
Not all contracts weight past performance equally. Consider prioritizing these procurement types in your first 2-3 years:
Win these, perform exceptionally, and use the resulting record to compete for the larger, best-value procurements where past performance is weighted most heavily.
Defense contractors using AI-powered proposals win more contracts with the same team. See how Genesis OS makes it happen.
See the PlatformEarning good past performance is only half the battle. Presenting it effectively in proposals is where many contractors — even experienced ones — fall short.
Every past performance citation must answer three questions for the evaluator:
Maintain a centralized repository of every contract, task order, and project that could serve as past performance. For each entry, document:
This library becomes the foundation for responding to past performance volumes across multiple proposals. Without it, proposal teams waste days reconstructing performance narratives under deadline pressure.
Read the solicitation's Section M (Evaluation Criteria) and Section L (Instructions to Offerors) before selecting which past performance references to cite. The government tells you exactly what they consider relevant. Common relevance factors include:
Select references that maximize overlap with these factors. It is better to cite three highly relevant references than five where only two are strong matches.
Do not wait for the annual CPARS evaluation to find out how the government perceives your performance. Instead:
Conduct quarterly performance reviews with your contracting officer or COR. Ask specifically: "If you were writing my CPARS evaluation today, what rating would I receive and what would I need to do to move up one level?" This question forces concrete feedback and gives you time to course-correct.
Document everything. Every deliverable, every milestone met, every problem solved. When the CPARS evaluation window opens, provide your COR with a comprehensive performance summary. CORs manage multiple contracts and may not remember your team's accomplishments from nine months ago. Make it easy for them to write an Exceptional rating.
Exceed the Statement of Work. CPARS Exceptional ratings require performance that "significantly exceeds" requirements. This means delivering ahead of schedule, identifying cost savings the government did not request, or producing deliverables that exceed quality standards. Merely meeting every requirement earns you Satisfactory.
Contractors have 30 days to review and comment on draft CPARS evaluations before they become final. This is your most important opportunity to influence your record.
If the draft rating is lower than expected:
If the draft contains factual errors — wrong dates, incorrect scope descriptions, attribution of problems caused by other contractors — these must be corrected before the evaluation is finalized. Once a CPARS evaluation is final, changing it becomes extraordinarily difficult.
Formal disputes of final CPARS evaluations are possible but rarely successful. The process involves:
The standard of review favors the government's original assessment. Prevention through quarterly engagement is far more effective than after-the-fact disputes.
Listing every contract you have ever performed, regardless of relevance, signals to evaluators that you do not understand what they need. Worse, it buries your strong references under weak ones. Quality always beats quantity.
Government personnel rotate positions every 2-3 years. If your cited contracting officer has retired, PCS'd, or moved to a different agency, the evaluation team may not be able to verify your past performance — and unverifiable references are treated as non-existent. Verify every reference contact within 30 days of proposal submission.
"Provided IT support services to the Army" tells evaluators nothing useful. "Managed Tier 2/3 help desk operations for 12,000 users across CONUS and OCONUS Army installations, maintaining 99.7% SLA compliance over 36 months and reducing mean time to resolution from 4.2 hours to 1.8 hours" gives evaluators data they can use to assess your relevance and quality.
If you used key subcontractors on previous work and plan to use them on the new opportunity, their past performance matters too. Evaluators may consider (and some solicitations explicitly require) past performance of major subcontractors. Coordinate with your team to present a unified past performance narrative.
If a past contract had issues — and the government is likely aware of them through CPARS — pretending they did not happen destroys credibility. Instead, briefly acknowledge the issue, explain the corrective action taken, and demonstrate the positive outcome. Evaluators respect contractors who learn from problems.
Most solicitations specify a recency window for past performance — typically 3-5 years. Citing work from eight years ago, even if it was exceptional, signals that you have not performed relevant work recently. Prioritize recent performance, and if your most relevant work is older, explain ongoing work that maintains your capability.
The administrative burden of managing past performance across multiple contracts, subcontracts, and commercial projects is one of the hidden costs of federal contracting. AI tools are transforming how contractors handle this challenge.
A mid-size defense contractor with 15 active contracts, 30 completed contracts, and 50 subcontract task orders has potentially hundreds of performance data points scattered across CPARS records, client correspondence, deliverable acceptance documents, quality metrics dashboards, and personnel records. When a new RFP drops with a 30-day response window, proposal teams scramble to find the right references, verify contacts, and write compelling narratives.
Modern AI platforms address this by:
Automated ingestion and indexing. AI systems can parse CPARS evaluations, contract documents, performance reports, and correspondence to build structured performance profiles for every contract. Natural language processing extracts key metrics, identifies strengths highlighted by government evaluators, and flags areas needing improvement.
Relevance matching. When a new solicitation is released, AI can analyze the evaluation criteria and automatically rank your past performance references by relevance. Instead of a proposal manager manually reviewing 50 contracts to find the best three references, the AI surfaces the top candidates in seconds with an explanation of why each is relevant.
Narrative generation assistance. AI tools can draft past performance narrative sections by combining contract data, CPARS ratings, quantified metrics, and relevance mapping into structured proposal text that follows the solicitation's instructions. Human proposal writers refine and verify rather than drafting from scratch.
Contact verification tracking. AI-driven CRM integration can track government personnel movements and flag when a reference contact has changed positions, prompting you to update your records before proposal deadlines.
Several platforms now compete in the AI-assisted proposal and past performance space:
GovDash offers a proposal automation platform with past performance database features. Its strengths include government data integration and opportunity matching. However, GovDash operates as a cloud SaaS product, meaning your sensitive past performance data — including contract details, government contact information, and CPARS ratings — resides on shared infrastructure.
Vultron provides AI-powered proposal writing with a focus on compliance checking and content reuse. Its past performance module helps organize references but operates similarly to GovDash in its cloud-first architecture.
Cabrillo Club takes a fundamentally different approach. As a private AI execution platform, Cabrillo Club runs within your own security boundary, which means your past performance data, CPARS records, proposal drafts, and competitive intelligence never leave your controlled environment. For defense contractors handling CUI on their contracts — where past performance narratives may reference classified program names, contract values, and government personnel — this distinction is not a feature preference, it is a CMMC compliance requirement.
Cabrillo Club's AI analyzes your complete past performance portfolio, matches references to new opportunities using the solicitation's specific evaluation criteria, and generates draft narrative sections that your proposal team can refine. Because the AI runs locally with access to your full document library — including CUI-marked materials that cannot be uploaded to cloud platforms — it produces more accurate and complete past performance narratives than any tool limited to sanitized data.
The platform also tracks CPARS evaluation timelines, alerts you when draft evaluations are due for response, and maintains a living database of reference contacts with automatic verification reminders. This operational workflow layer is what distinguishes a purpose-built secure operations platform from a generic proposal tool.
Past performance is not built in a quarter. It is built over 2-5 years with deliberate planning. Here is a practical timeline for a new defense contractor:
Year 1: Foundation
Year 2: Expansion
Year 3 and Beyond: Competitive Positioning
This timeline is aggressive but realistic. Companies that take a passive approach — "we'll build past performance as opportunities come" — typically find themselves in year three with a thin and unfocused portfolio. Deliberate strategy is what separates contractors who break through from those who remain perpetually in the "no past performance" trap.
Past performance includes any previous work that is relevant to the contract being competed. This encompasses federal prime contracts, federal subcontracts, state and local government contracts, commercial contracts and projects, SBIR/STTR awards, and even work performed under grants or cooperative agreements. The key criterion is relevance — the work must be similar in scope, magnitude, complexity, and/or contract type to the current requirement. FAR 15.305(a)(2) gives contracting officers broad discretion in determining what constitutes relevant past performance, so the burden is on you to demonstrate the connection between previous work and the current opportunity.
Most federal solicitations specify a recency requirement, typically 3-5 years from the proposal due date. Some agencies accept up to 6 years, particularly for specialized work where the pool of experienced contractors is small. The specific timeframe is stated in Section L (Instructions to Offerors) of each solicitation. Even if a solicitation allows older references, recent performance carries more weight in evaluation. If your most relevant work is 4-5 years old, supplement it with more recent work that demonstrates you have maintained and advanced your capabilities since then. Work performed more than 5 years ago should generally be cited only if no recent comparable work exists.
Yes. FAR does not distinguish between prime and subcontract experience for past performance evaluation purposes. Work performed as a subcontractor is legitimate past performance, and evaluators should consider it. However, you must be able to clearly demonstrate what your company specifically performed under the subcontract — evaluators will discount references where it is unclear which team member performed which work. Get written documentation from the prime contractor confirming your scope, deliverables, and performance quality. If possible, ensure the prime contractor identifies your firm by name in their CPARS self-assessment and that government evaluators are aware of your specific contribution. Some solicitations explicitly ask whether cited experience was as a prime or subcontractor, and some give greater weight to prime experience — but subcontract performance absolutely counts.
The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) is the government's official database for recording and retrieving contractor performance evaluations. After contract completion (or annually for multi-year contracts exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold), the government evaluates your performance across multiple dimensions — quality, schedule, cost control, management, and regulatory compliance — and assigns adjectival ratings from Exceptional to Unsatisfactory. These evaluations are stored in the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), which contracting officers access when evaluating proposals. CPARS ratings are powerful because they are government-generated assessments that carry inherent credibility. You cannot control what the government writes, but you can influence it through proactive performance management, quarterly COR engagement, and thorough responses to draft evaluations within the 30-day comment period. Every contractor with active federal contracts above $250,000 should actively manage their CPARS profile.
FAR 15.305(a)(2)(iv) requires that offerors without a past performance record "may not be evaluated favorably or unfavorably on past performance." In practice, this means new companies receive a "neutral" or "unknown confidence" rating. While neutral is better than negative, it rarely wins against competitors with Exceptional or Very Good ratings. To compete effectively, new companies should: (1) start with contract types that minimize past performance weight — simplified acquisitions, LPTA procurements, SBIR/STTR, and small business set-asides; (2) leverage key personnel past performance, since many solicitations evaluate the experience of named personnel alongside organizational past performance; (3) use mentor-protege joint ventures to leverage a mentor's past performance for up to two contract awards; and (4) aggressively pursue subcontracting work, state/local contracts, and commercial projects that build a verifiable record within 12-18 months. The companies that break through fastest are those that treat past performance acquisition as a funded business development activity, not a passive byproduct of winning work.
Yes, but with important caveats. FAR allows evaluators to consider commercial experience as relevant past performance, and many solicitations explicitly state they will do so. However, you must present commercial experience in a way that helps government evaluators assess relevance. This means translating commercial project descriptions into language comparable to federal Statements of Work, quantifying performance with metrics similar to CPARS evaluation areas, and providing client references willing to speak with government evaluators. Commercial experience is strongest when the technical requirements closely parallel the federal need — for example, building HIPAA-compliant healthcare systems as relevant experience for VA health IT contracts, or securing financial services infrastructure as relevant to DoD cybersecurity requirements.
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This guide is part of the [Winning Federal Contracts](/insights/winning-federal-contracts) series. For related strategies, see our guides on [teaming agreements for federal contractors](/insights/govcon-teaming-agreement-guide), [AI-powered proposal compliance](/insights/compliant-ai-proposal-guide), and [CMMC compliance requirements](/insights/cmmc-compliance-guide).
Defense contractors using AI-powered proposals win more contracts with the same team. See how Genesis OS makes it happen.
See the Platform
Cabrillo Club
Editorial Team
Cabrillo Club is a defense technology company building AI-powered tools for government contractors. Our editorial team combines deep expertise in CMMC compliance, federal acquisition, and secure AI infrastructure to produce actionable guidance for the defense industrial base.
Defense contractors using AI-powered proposals win more contracts with the same team. See how Genesis OS makes it happen.
See the Platform