I'm putting together an emergent contract for financial advisory services. For the past performance factor, I'm calling their references. The challenge is that most of the offerors are firms in NYC who are constantly poaching each other's top talent.

So Offeror A might provide a reference, but when I call the reference, what I get is: "John Smith is an outstanding advisor who produced all these great results. He was with Offeror A at the time of the referenced work, but now he's with Offeror B. I have no opinion on Offeror A as a firm. You should go with Offeror B because that's where John Smith is."

This is a first for me. I've never considered evaluating the past performance of individuals instead of companies before. I want to use the information because it's useful to the Government's award decision, but I'm torn on how -- do I give credit to Offeror A, Offeror B, or some combination of both?

I don't know what your solicitation called for, but I work for an accounting and consulting firm. When we submit a proposal to a commercial client, we usually propose a team by name to be working on the project. We also provide the resumes of team members. It is the qualifications of the team that is evaluated, instead of the entire firm.

@FrankJon This happens occasionally in R&D, scientific studies, and IT development projects where there are a limited number of personnel with unique expertise or capabilities available in the field. Companies hire or subcontract these experts for specific projects and then the experts move on.

Past performance usually addresses this by saying Joe (the expert) worked on this project for company A but no longer there. While the project was successful, that was largely due to Joe’s involvement but he’s gone. Its questionable if similar success can occur in the future. Or Joe’s impact was good but not essential to the successful outcome and other staff are available.

I commend you for calling references. It seems like the government gravitated towards the easy and risk adverse means of gathering past performance data - surveys and CPARS reports. There’s nothing like talking with the knowledgable people who actually experienced performance and have meaningful dialogue on the experience.

1 hour ago, Retreadfed said:

I don't know what your solicitation called for, but I work for an accounting and consulting firm. When we submit a proposal to a commercial client, we usually propose a team by name to be working on the project. We also provide the resumes of team members. It is the qualifications of the team that is evaluated, instead of the entire firm.

That makes sense. It's just unusual in Federal contracting to discuss past performance this way. For example, when we do CPARS, we're evaluating entities. If the contractor does outstanding work thanks to a lone rockstar employee, the company would get the rating nonetheless.

1 hour ago, formerfed said:

Past performance usually addresses this by saying Joe (the expert) worked on this project for company A but no longer there. While the project was successful, that was largely due to Joe’s involvement but he’s gone. Its questionable if similar success can occur in the future. Or Joe’s impact was good but not essential to the successful outcome and other staff are available.

Would you also give Joe's new company credit for his performance at his old company? Or would that go too far in your view?

1 hour ago, formerfed said:

I commend you for calling references. It seems like the government gravitated towards the easy and risk adverse means of gathering past performance data - surveys and CPARS reports. There’s nothing like talking with the knowledgable people who actually experienced performance and have meaningful dialogue on the experience.

Thanks! Agree. I've encouraged my employees and colleagues to do it this way for years.

We evaluated the qualifications of key personnel that offerors proposed for many years. We identified the positions that we considered to be “key”.

We also stated in the contract that substitutions of specifically proposed key personnel would be subject to the KO’s review and approval. Any proposed substitute would be evaluated in comparison to the qualifications and experience of the originally proposed and evaluated key person.

12 hours ago, FrankJon said:

outstanding advisor

Hmmm? Just a clarification for me as I follow. Advisor equals employee, or subcontractor?

9 hours ago, FrankJon said:

Would you also give Joe's new company credit for his performance at his old company? Or would that go too far in your view?

Yes, I would but not significant.

On 7/17/2026 at 8:45 AM, FrankJon said:

do I give credit to Offeror A, Offeror B, or some combination of both?

This scenario does come up, as @formerfed mentions, in R&D / science / IT. Think of it like this - the government is hiring a team, not a company.

I would 1) downgrade the relevancy/importance of PP for both offerors, 2) increase the contract's performance risk, and/or 3) reduce the comparative differences in PP between offerors for source selection purposes. If individuals have a disproportionately large impact on offeror past performance, and you cannot comfortably assume those individuals will remain with any offeror for the duration of the contract, then offeror's past performance is a relatively weaker signal of their ability to perform the contract successfully. The offeror's specific proposed team, the key individuals proposed to do the work, becomes the relatively stronger signal - but it comes with a big risk, those individuals staying on the job post-award.

Note that this scenario, a very strong PP indicator is an offeror demonstrating a consistent history of hiring and retaining one star performer after another - think Boston Celtics or Yale.

I’ve seen solicitations requiring offerors to submit HR data showing corporate retention percentages for the job categories. I don’t know if that works here but the general concern for agencies is minimizing performance disruptions when positions need replacing.

I can see two different situations. One involves one or a few superstars that can’t easily be replaced. These people often are in high demand and frequently change jobs due to seeking new interests/challenges and/or better compensation. I’ve got a good personal friend that fits in this category. He’s worked for six financial advisory firms in five years. Ironically he’s in NYC. Dealing with a company employing those superstars and considering past performance is different that the other situation.

The other involves evaluating a team. No single individual has relatively unique expertise. So you designate certain individuals as key personnel. You evaluate resumes and corporate experience in recruiting and retaining staff. If the evaluation discloses a good track record, the loss of a team member isn’t so critical.

On 7/17/2026 at 9:12 PM, C Culham said:

Advisor equals employee, or subcontractor?

Financial advisor. An employee of one competing firm and a former employee of another competing firm. Both firms use the same past performance work example.

@formerfed and @General.Zhukov thank you both for the robust insights. What you're saying makes a lot of sense for my situation.