Glossary
What is past performance?
Past performance is evidence of how you performed work that looks like the work in the notice. Agencies ask for it because a proposal is a promise. The record is how they test the promise.
It is not the same as “we have been in business for ten years.” A relevant contract, with a customer who will speak to it, is stronger than a long company story. Federal forms such as the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, when they apply, are one official place that record lives. Private-sector work can matter when the notice allows it. Read the notice. Some buys limit what you may cite.
A brand-new firm is not barred from every competition. Some notices are aimed at firms without a long federal file. Others will score experience heavily, and a thin file will lose points. That is a reason to choose notices with care, not a reason to invent contracts.
Subcontracting, teaming, and key people are the usual ways a new firm assembles a credible story. Each of those has to be true and allowed by the solicitation.
See the draft on past performance when you have none once it is published. Until then, use the notice in front of you as the rule.