Past Performance Reference Template
A register that dates every contract from the day performance ended, and counts every questionnaire on the official it was sent to.
Free download · No account needed
Reference Register
One row per contract, and what each row has to carry
| Rows | Every contract the company could ever offer |
| Rescored | Every solicitation, from the attributes |
| Never stored on a row | A relevancy score or a ranking |
The two dates on every row
| Date | Runs from | Compared against |
|---|---|---|
| The window the work earns | Completion of performance | Proposal due date |
| The window the buyer states | Whatever the package names | Proposal due date |
Three years for most work, six for construction and design. A contract still in performance has no completion date, so no expiry.
Four cases, and only one of them is available
| Inside both windows | Submittable |
| Still in performance | Submittable, no expiry |
| Inside its own, outside the buyer’s | A question, not a nomination |
| Outside both | Off this bid, stays on the register |
Then the person
The questionnaire goes to a named assessing official with a role at the customer. Two more gates sit there: whether they still hold the role, and whether anybody has asked them.
A reference ages from the day performance ended, not from the day it was awarded. Federal buyers use recorded performance information within three years of completion, and six on construction and design work, and the solicitation states its own window on top of that. So every contract on the register carries two expiry dates, both measured against the proposal due date. Tidewater Analytic Group holds ten. Two sit outside the window the day the register is rescored, and one of those two is the joint best fit it owns.
The relevancy score is not a property of a contract either. The solicitation describes the approach its evaluators will apply, and the selection authority decides what counts as relevant, so a score stored on a row belongs to a bid already decided. Then the questionnaire goes to a person: GSA's form asks for the assessing official by name, phone and role. One official here has been sent six and returned one, on the highest-scoring contract the company holds, and the last of those went out 21 days ago.
Which changes what gets submitted. The top three by relevancy score 16 and deliver an expected 9.25, against 14 and 10.42 for a different set, at 2.7 times the chance all three come back. Both cover all five required work elements on paper, and in expectation one covers 4.22 and the other 3.39, because two elements ride on the row that answers least often. The bid itself is the RFP response pack, and the obligations that reject a public bid unread are their own pack.
What's in the pack
Reference Register
Every contract with both expiry dates, its work elements, its named assessing official and its consent state, measured against the proposal due date.
Contact Response Log
One row per official: questionnaires sent, returned, days since the last one, and a rate with one added to each side so a single return is not certainty.
Relevancy Scoring
Rebuilt for each solicitation from its own stated tests, components kept separate, and the elements each contract does not cover written out.
Nomination Set Comparison
Every possible set of the required size, scored on expected relevancy, the chance all of them return, and expected element coverage.
How a Reference Gets Chosen
One federal solicitation worked end to end across ten contracts, including the element-by-element table where the two orderings come apart.
Reference Profile Standard
The nine fields a register row carries before it can be scored, and the six ways rows get written so that nothing can be matched against them.
Consent Standard
Why a tick in a consent column records nothing, and the four facts that replace it: who, what scope, when, and how often they have been asked.
Nomination Note
What the proposal manager is signing off: the set, what was left out with the number that left it out, and the risk being accepted.
How it works
- 1
Open it in River, or download it
Edit with AI installs the pack as a private Space with the agent ready to read a solicitation. Download gives you the four sheets and four documents as Word files and CSV, with no account.
- 2
Send the solicitation and the prior work
The package with its attached reference form, then contract numbers, values, periods of performance and what the work covered. The field that changes the answer is who could assess each one and whether they have answered before.
- 3
Rescore against this solicitation
Both windows go on every row and get compared against the proposal date. Relevancy is computed from the attributes against the tests this package states, never carried over from the last bid it was scored for.
- 4
Compare the set against the ranking
Every possible set is scored on expected relevancy, the chance all of them return and expected element coverage. The Nomination Note says what was given up and what risk the signature accepts.
Frequently asked questions
Is this free?
The download is free and needs no account: four sheets and four documents, the same files the pack installs. Edit with AI creates a free account and opens the pack as a private Space with the agent primed to read a solicitation and build the register from your own contracts.
What format are the downloaded files?
The four documents come as .docx and the four sheets as .csv. Word, Pages and Google Docs open the documents, and Excel, Numbers and Sheets open the sheets. Nothing needs converting. Add ?format=pdf to the download if you want to read or circulate rather than fill in.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
It reads the solicitation for its own recency window and relevancy tests, builds the register with both expiry dates on every row, logs each assessing official's answering history, scores every contract against this package, and enumerates the sets. Whatever it cannot find, it names as an open field.
We already track references in a spreadsheet. What is different?
Three columns. An expiry date that runs from completion of performance rather than from award, a relevancy score recomputed per solicitation instead of stored, and questionnaires counted on the named official rather than on the customer. The set arithmetic only works once all three exist.
Where do the return rates come from if we have never tracked them?
From whatever is recoverable, which is usually prior proposals and a sent items folder. Where nothing exists, a row with no history takes the middle of the range rather than a guess, and this bid is where the record starts. Debriefs are the other place it turns up.
Does this write the past performance narrative?
No. It decides which contracts get nominated and fills in the reference form the package supplies, in its own field order. Each work description is written against this solicitation's element list, in the vocabulary an evaluator is matching against. The volume around them is separate work: reusable answer content and requirement extraction.
Our best reference is four years old. Is it really unusable?
It depends on the work. Construction and design contracts stay usable for six years from completion where most work gets three, so a four-year-old design contract may still be inside its own window while outside a flat three-year one a package states. That difference is a question for the question window.
Build the register before the next one asks for three
Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and have both expiry dates put on every contract you hold and every possible set of three scored on what it is expected to deliver.
Edit with AI