5.3  How to Evaluate an Unknown Past Performance

In most cases, the contracting officer will find some related government or private performance information for each contractor or subcontractor.  This is especially true if the evaluation approach allows a broad interpretation of relevance or takes into account information regarding the past performance of predecessor companies, key personnel who have relevant experience or subcontractors that will perform key aspects of the requirement.  Occasionally the contracting officer will not find any relevant performance information or the offeror's performance record is so limited that no confidence assessment rating can be reasonably assigned.  In these cases, treat an offeror's lack of past performance as an unknown degree of confidence, having no positive or negative evaluation significance.