How to Write a Past Performance Section When You Don't Have GC Experience

The Catch-22 of GC Past Performance

It is the most frustrating barrier in federal procurement: you cannot win GC contracts without GC experience, and you cannot get GC experience without winning GC contracts.

Or so it seems. In reality, most Government of Canada solicitations do not require past performance to be exclusively from federal engagements. The evaluation criteria typically ask for "relevant experience" or "similar projects," and with the right framing, experience from other sectors can be highly competitive.

The challenge is not whether non-GC experience counts — it is how you present it to evaluators who are assessing whether your firm can deliver in the federal context. That presentation requires deliberate strategy and careful writing.

What Evaluators Actually Look For

Before writing your past performance section, understand what GC evaluators are trying to determine. They are not checking a box for "has GC experience." They are assessing risk — specifically, the risk that your firm will fail to deliver. Their questions, whether stated explicitly or implied by the evaluation criteria, include:

• Has this firm delivered work of similar scope and complexity?
• Does the firm understand the type of environment they will be working in (structured, policy-driven, security-conscious)?
• Can the firm manage the administrative and reporting requirements of a GC contract?
• Does the firm have references who can speak to their delivery performance?

You can address every one of these questions with non-GC experience — if you frame it correctly.

Strategy 1: Lead with Provincial and Municipal Experience

Provincial and municipal government experience is the closest analogue to federal work. Provincial governments use similar procurement frameworks, impose comparable security and privacy requirements, and operate within structured policy environments. Evaluators recognize this similarity.

When presenting provincial or municipal experience:

• Emphasize the governance context. Mention that the work was performed under a formal procurement contract with defined deliverables, milestones, and reporting requirements.
• Highlight security and privacy requirements. If you handled personal information under provincial privacy legislation (such as Ontario's FIPPA or British Columbia's FOIPPA), note this explicitly. It demonstrates your ability to work with sensitive data under regulatory constraints — directly relevant to Protected A and Protected B requirements in the federal context.
• Reference the procurement framework. If you were qualified under a provincial supply arrangement or standing offer, mention it. This shows evaluators that your firm has been through a government pre-qualification process.

Strategy 2: Frame Private Sector Experience in Government Terms

Private sector experience can be compelling if you translate it into language that resonates with GC evaluators. The key is to map your private sector deliverables and achievements to the concepts and frameworks that federal evaluators understand.

Translation Examples

| Private Sector Language | GC-Resonant Language | |---|---| | "Delivered a CRM implementation for a Fortune 500 client" | "Delivered an enterprise application implementation for an organization with 5,000+ users, following a structured project management methodology with formal milestone reviews and change control processes" | | "Managed a $2M IT infrastructure upgrade" | "Led a complex IT infrastructure modernization project valued at $2M, including requirements definition, vendor coordination, testing, and operational transition — comparable in scope to a GC task authorization under TBIPS" | | "Built a secure data pipeline for a financial services client" | "Designed and implemented a data pipeline handling personally identifiable information (PII) under regulatory compliance requirements, with encryption at rest and in transit, access controls, and audit logging" |

The goal is not to obscure the private sector origin of the experience — evaluators will see your client names and know they are not government departments. The goal is to make the relevance immediately obvious by using familiar concepts and demonstrating that the complexity, scale, and governance requirements of your private sector work are comparable to what the GC needs.

Strategy 3: Leverage Subcontracting Experience

If your firm has performed work as a subcontractor on a GC contract, this is GC experience — even if you were not the prime contractor. Many small firms overlook their subcontracting history when assembling past performance narratives.

When presenting subcontracting experience:

• Name the prime contractor and the department (with the prime's permission) to establish the federal context.
• Describe your firm's specific contribution, not the overall project. Evaluators want to know what your team delivered, not what the prime delivered.
• Include the security clearance level at which your personnel worked, if applicable.
• Obtain a reference from the prime contractor or, if possible, from the departmental project authority who supervised your work directly.

Strategy 4: Emphasize Transferable Competencies

Some evaluation criteria focus on competencies rather than specific project experience. For these criteria, you can draw on a broader range of experience to demonstrate your firm's capabilities.

Competencies That Transfer Well

• Project management in structured environments: Any experience managing projects with formal governance, milestone reviews, change control, and stakeholder reporting
• Security-conscious delivery: Experience handling sensitive data under regulatory requirements (PIPEDA, provincial privacy legislation, financial regulations)
• Bilingual delivery: Experience delivering services or documentation in both English and French
• Agile and DevOps practices: GC departments are increasingly adopting agile methodologies, and experience with agile delivery in any sector is directly relevant
• Accessibility compliance: Experience implementing WCAG standards or equivalent accessibility requirements

Strategy 5: Build GC Experience Deliberately

While the strategies above help you compete today, the long-term solution is to build actual GC experience. Start with opportunities that are most accessible to firms without federal past performance:

• Low-value contracts under $25,000: These are often procured through simplified processes with less emphasis on past performance.
• Call-ups against standing offers: Once qualified, call-ups often have lighter evaluation criteria than full RFPs.
• Subcontracting with established primes: Approach prime contractors who hold TBIPS or ProServices qualifications and offer your firm as a subcontractor for specific task authorizations.
• PSPC supplier engagement events: Attend these events to learn about upcoming opportunities and make connections with departmental procurement officers.

Each of these engagements, no matter how small, becomes a GC past performance reference that strengthens your future proposals.

Writing the Actual Section

When you sit down to write the past performance section of your proposal, follow this structure for each project reference:

Project Overview

One paragraph describing the project, the client, the duration, and the contract value. Establish the scale and context.

Relevance to Current Requirements

Two to three sentences explicitly connecting this past project to the requirements in the current solicitation. Do not make the evaluator guess why this project is relevant — state it directly.

Your Firm's Role and Deliverables

Describe what your firm specifically delivered. Use concrete language: number of resources deployed, technologies used, deliverables produced, milestones met.

Outcomes and Results

Quantify outcomes where possible: on-time delivery, client satisfaction metrics, measurable business impacts.

Reference Contact

Provide a named reference with current contact information who has agreed to be contacted. Confirm with your references before submitting — evaluators who cannot reach your references will not give you the benefit of the doubt.

The Confidence Gap

The biggest barrier for firms without GC experience is often not the experience itself but the confidence to present non-GC work as relevant. Stop apologizing for not having federal past performance. Frame your experience positively, demonstrate its relevance explicitly, and let the evaluators assess it on its merits. Many successful GC contractors won their first federal contract on the strength of provincial, municipal, or private sector experience — presented with clarity and conviction.