Building past performance when you have none

Every new federal contractor hits the same wall. Evaluations weight past performance. Relevant past performance means federal contracts. You cannot get a federal contract without relevant past performance. The loop closes and it looks impassable.

It is not, but the ways through it are specific, and most of them are unglamorous. Here they are, roughly in order of how quickly they produce something citable.

First, understand what is actually being asked

Past performance is an evaluated factor, not a pass/fail gate. Section M of a solicitation will tell you how it is weighted and — critically — how relevance is defined. The usual formulation is some combination of:

• Size — similar dollar value and scale
• Scope — similar type of work
• Complexity — similar technical or management difficulty
• Recency — usually within the last three to five years

Note what is not in that list: "must be a federal contract." Many solicitations will accept commercial, state, local, or subcontract experience if it is relevant against those criteria. Some restrict it; most do not. Read the actual language before assuming you are excluded.

There is also a rule that works in your favour: an offeror with no relevant past performance history generally may not be evaluated favourably or unfavourably on it — it is treated as neutral. In practice a neutral rating is a real disadvantage against a competitor with an excellent one, but it is not disqualification, and on lowest-price-technically-acceptable procurements it costs you very little. That is one reason LPTA work is a reasonable entry point.

Route 1: Subcontract to a prime

The fastest legitimate route, and the most under-used.

Large federal prime contracts generally carry small business subcontracting plans, with goals broken out by category — small business, small disadvantaged, women-owned, HUBZone, service-disabled veteran-owned. Primes are measured against those goals. A prime who is behind on a category has an active, self-interested reason to find you.

The work is real federal performance. You can cite it, describe it, and get a reference from the prime.

How to do it:

1. Search recent awards in your NAICS codes to find who won work you could have contributed to.
2. Look for large awards — those are the ones carrying subcontracting plans.
3. Find the prime's small business liaison officer. Large contractors have them, usually listed on their supplier or small-business page.
4. Approach with a capability statement and a specific proposition: which scope element you would take, why you can do it, and what category you count in.

Timing matters. Approaching a prime after they have won is late — the team was assembled during the proposal. Approach before the recompete, or during a solicitation's teaming window, and you are part of the bid rather than an afterthought. Full guide: subcontracting as a way in.

Route 2: Go after the small buys everyone skips

Purchases between the micro-purchase threshold and the simplified acquisition threshold are, with limited exceptions, reserved for small businesses, and they use dramatically lighter procedures. Below the micro-purchase threshold, a government cardholder can just buy from you.

These are small — a few thousand to a couple hundred thousand dollars — which is precisely why experienced competitors deprioritise them and why they are available. A $40,000 delivery order performed well is a federal contract, a CPARS record on larger ones, and a customer who now knows your name.

New contractors skip these because the revenue looks unexciting. That is the mistake. The revenue is not the point in year one; the citation is.

Sort opportunities by value and start at the bottom, not the top.

Route 3: Use the relevant work you already have

You are probably discounting work that would score.

• Commercial contracts of similar scope and complexity. A three-year managed services contract with a 400-person hospital is relevant to a 400-seat federal requirement, and you should say so in those terms.
• State, county and municipal contracts. Public-sector work, competitively awarded, with a government customer and compliance obligations. Frequently accepted as relevant.
• Grant-funded or non-profit work, if the scope matches.
• Work performed as a subcontractor in the commercial world.

The presentation is what makes the difference. Do not list "ABC Hospital — IT services, 2023–2026." Map it explicitly to the evaluation criteria: scope — same services as the SOW's paragraphs 3.1–3.4; size — $1.2M annual, comparable to this requirement's estimated value; complexity — 24/7 operations, HIPAA compliance, multi-site. Make the evaluator's job trivial. They are scoring against criteria, and if you have already done the mapping, they will use yours.

Route 4: Team or joint venture

Teaming — you subcontract under another small business who has the history, or they under you. Sometimes the prime's past performance can be considered where the team member will perform meaningful scope; whether and how depends on the solicitation, so read Section M.

Joint ventures, including the SBA's mentor-protégé programme, are a formal route: an approved mentor-protégé joint venture can pursue set-aside work using the combined capability of both parties, and there are specific provisions allowing the JV to be evaluated on the members' individual past performance. It is real paperwork and requires an approved agreement, but it exists precisely to solve this problem.

Both routes require caution about affiliation and about SBA's rules on how much of the work the small business must perform. Get advice before structuring one.

Route 5: Perform well and capture it

Whatever you win first, treat the record of it as the deliverable.

On contracts above certain thresholds the government records a formal performance evaluation in CPARS. You have the right to review and comment on it. Do. An unchallenged mediocre rating follows you into every subsequent evaluation.

On smaller work with no CPARS record, capture it yourself while people still remember: a short written reference from the contracting officer or COR, the contract number, dollar value, period of performance, and a factual description of what you delivered. Ask at the end of the period of performance, not eighteen months later when your contact has moved.

Keep a past-performance file from day one. Contract number, customer, POC and current contact details, value, dates, scope description, outcomes with numbers. By your fourth bid you will be assembling this section in an hour instead of a weekend.

The realistic sequence

Subcontract or win a small buy in months 4–9. Perform well. Capture the reference. Use it to be competitive on a mid-size set-aside in months 12–18. That contract makes you competitive on the next tier.

It is slow and it compounds. The companies that are still bidding in year three are almost never the ones with the best proposals in year one — they are the ones that got one small thing over the line and documented it properly.

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ContractBeam aggregates public federal opportunity data. This guide is general business advice, not legal advice. Joint venture, mentor-protégé and affiliation rules are technical and consequential — get qualified advice before entering into one. Verify current thresholds and program rules at acquisition.gov and sba.gov.