Contractors should protect their reputation.

• Author: Stafford, John
• Position: Ethics Corner

Professional reputation is important for all businesses. But for government contractors, reputation in the form of past performance information often makes the difference between winning or losing a contract.

Contractors must ensure the accuracy and completeness of past performance information. The Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) is a government-wide portal through which contractors can access government performance assessments of their contracts. The same portal is available to agencies evaluating contractors for contract award.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation gives contractors the right to comment on adverse performance evaluations. Agency performance assessments are required for all contracts exceeding $100,000. Interim evaluations may also be required. In 1999, the Defense Department invoked a class deviation from this FAR blanket acquisition threshold, setting different dollar thresholds by business sector for performance assessments.

For instance, the information technology and service contracts threshold is $1 million; the construction contracts threshold is $500,000. For contracts over these amounts, the assessing government official must execute performance assessments, both interim as well as a final performance assessment report upon contract completion.

Most performance assessments have three components: the contracting officer's initial assessment; the contractor's comments and rebuttal; and the agency review. The contracting officer performs the initial assessment in conjunction with the program office personnel most familiar with the contractor's performance. After the initial assessment, the contractor normally has 30 days to respond and rebut any ratings.

If the contractor, the contracting officer and the lead assessor cannot agree on the ratings, the contractor may seek agency review by personnel at least one level above the contracting officer. If generated, contractor comments and agency reviews must be included with the initial assessment as a complete past performance file for past evaluations during any future source selection.

Two recent U.S. Court of Federal Claims cases, BLR Group of America, Inc. v. United States (Nov. 25, 2008) and Todd Construction, L.P. v. United States (Dec. 9, 2008), confirmed the U.S. Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction to hear contractor claims challenging improper past performance assessments. This judicial review provides an additional avenue to correct a...