Peepers. Well, not exactly. In this case I'm going to talk about PPIRS. That's the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS). PPIRS is actually just a meta search engine for several different systems used in the federal space. It is run by the Navy Sea Logistics Center.
But before i get into that, let's take a look at the problem it seeks to address. Here's the scenario, you put out an RFP and companies submit their proposals. You have 5 factors that you base your technical evaluation on. One of those factors is Past Performance. It has a 20% weight factor. Does this sound familiar? You review the proposals and each one submitted 3 references for beautiful projects that went extremely well. You might even call the references to verify. Each person you speak with speaks in very glowing terms about the project.
If it happens like this every time, then why do we even bother to call the references? In all the contract awards I have participated in, I have only seen one instance in which past performance was anything but glowing. So why do we bother?
We do it this way because that is how we were told to do it. Some person with more wisdom than us told us that was how she or he did it and we just sort of go along with what they did. That is great for what it is, but I don't feel like I'm getting additional value out of that process. The people I speak with, while maybe they are objective, could be something other than that. What is a guy to do? I want to take the subjectivity out of rating pastperformance. Enter PPIRS.
PPIRS (http://www.ppirs.gov/) data is based on the actual contract record at the time of closeout. My examination of the data for known entities leads me to believe that the data is generally accurate. As such, I would begin my examination of this factor in PPIRS and then rely on submitted information if the offeror doesn't have very much data in that system. Start early though, it took me some time to get into the system. Their verification process took a while.
By the way, why is this a Navy system? This should be sponsored by GSA or Commerce where there is a closer relation to the mission. The system is difficult to use because the GUI is not intuitive, but once you figure it out you can mine valuable information. So, here's to making the review of past performance a little bit more objective.
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