From ‘Lowest Price’ to ‘Best Value’ – How Evaluation Culture Is Changing

For years, “lowest price wins” ruled federal contracting, but that’s not the whole story anymore. 

In this episode of FedBiz’5, we unpack how FAR changes, MAS reforms, and category management are pushing agencies toward true best-value decisions that weigh performance, past performance, and risk alongside price. 

You’ll hear five practical ways to package value in your bids. From turning past performance into mission-focused case studies to proving real surge capacity and bringing “innovation receipts” instead of buzzwords, so evaluators have clear reasons to choose you even when you’re not the cheapest. 

If you’re a small or mid-sized government contractor tired of racing to the bottom on price, this episode will help you rethink how you position your offers and win in a best-value world.

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Transcript

Hello all, and welcome back to another FedBiz Five, your quick dive into all things government contracting. I’m Sam Fields, and today we’re talking about a shift that’s been building for years but is really starting to show up in day-to-day evaluations.

We’re moving from “lowest price wins” toward “best value wins.”

Between the FAR overhaul, Multiple Award Schedule reforms, and category management pushing Best-in-Class contracts, agencies are under more pressure than ever to justify awards based on performance, past performance, and risk – not just who came in cheapest.

So in this episode, we’re going to unpack what that means in practice and walk through five concrete ways you can package value – not just price – in your proposals.

Let’s start with the basics.

For a long time, especially in certain parts of DoD, Lowest Price Technically Acceptable – LPTA – had a lot of inertia. If you were technically acceptable and the cheapest, you won. Period. That model works fine for truly commoditized buys where performance is easy to define and easy to replace. But it does not work well when you’re buying complex services, cybersecurity, weapons systems, or anything where failure actually hurts the mission.

That’s why we’ve seen a steady tightening around LPTA. Congress and oversight bodies have pushed agencies to avoid LPTA for complex or knowledge-based work. On top of that, the broader FAR overhaul is updating the “best value continuum,” making it clearer when tradeoffs are expected and what evaluators should look for beyond price.

And over at GSA, MAS reform and category management are pushing agencies toward Best-in-Class contracts and best-value evaluations as the default, especially on the Schedule.

What does all that mean in plain English?

It means that more and more often, your proposal will be judged on the overall value you bring – your past performance, your risk profile, your ability to surge, your innovation – with price as one factor, not the only factor.

So the real question is: how do you “package” that value so evaluators can see it, score it, and defend picking you even if you’re not the low bid?

Let’s walk through five ways.

Sam Fields:
 First, turn past performance into a story, not a list.

Most proposals still treat past performance like a résumé – contract numbers, periods of performance, contract values. Evaluators skim that and shrug. In a best-value world, you want each reference to read like a mini case study that proves you’re the low-risk choice.

For every major past performance, answer three simple questions in your write-up.

What was the mission problem the agency cared about?
 What did you actually do, step by step, to solve it?
 What measurable outcome did you deliver?

Instead of “provided help desk support for 10,000 users,” think: “Cut average ticket resolution time from four hours to under sixty minutes while maintaining 98 percent customer satisfaction over three years.”

That kind of narrative gives evaluators something they can point to when they argue you’re a better value than someone who is just cheaper on paper.

Sam Fields:
 Second, show how you reduce risk – explicitly.

In most best-value evaluations, “risk” is either its own factor or baked into technical and past performance criteria. If you don’t frame your risk story, evaluators will make one up for you.

Spell it out.

Describe how you onboard staff without disruption. Explain your continuity and turnover plans. Highlight how you manage key personnel, surge, and backfill. Call out your quality control processes in a way that’s actually tied to the work – not generic boilerplate that could fit any contract.

If you’ve inherited troubled programs before and stabilized them, talk about that. For example: “We’ve taken over three at-risk programs in the last five years and brought all of them back to green within two quarters.” That is a powerful risk-reduction signal.

The mental question evaluators are asking is: “If I award to this company, how likely is this contract to go sideways?” Your job is to make the answer, “Very unlikely – and if something does wobble, they have a process to catch it fast.”

Sam Fields:
 Third, demonstrate true surge capacity, not just buzzwords.

Almost every proposal promises “scalability” and “surge on demand.” Very few prove it.

Surge is a big part of best value because it speaks directly to mission resilience. If your customer knows that you can ramp up when things hit the fan, your higher price suddenly looks a lot more reasonable.

So get specific.

Talk about how many cleared or qualified people you can bring on within 30, 60, or 90 days. Show where those people would come from – bench, subcontractors, recruiting pipelines. Give a real example where you surged on a previous contract and hit the mark: “When Agency X rolled out Y initiative, we doubled staff in sixty days without missing a single SLA.”

If the requirement is nationwide, mention how your geographic footprint supports surge. If it’s niche technical work, show how your partnerships or subcontractor network give you instant access to specialized skills.

Surge is one of those areas where an extra two or three paragraphs can change the whole complexion of your value story.

Sam Fields:
 Fourth, bring innovation receipts, not just innovation claims.

Everybody says they’re innovative. In a best-value culture, evaluators are starting to ask, “Okay, prove it.”

Innovation receipts are proof points – small, concrete examples of where you changed a process, introduced a tool, or improved an outcome.

Maybe you automated a manual reporting process and saved the government 200 hours a year. Maybe you used analytics to predict failure points in a maintenance program and cut downtime by 15 percent. Maybe you brought in a commercial best practice that made the agency’s program easier to manage.

Those are innovation receipts.

Tie each one to a measurable mission result: faster, cheaper, safer, more accurate, more resilient. And make sure they’re relevant to the requirement you’re currently bidding. Innovation that lives in some other silo doesn’t score you many points.

Sam Fields:
 Fifth, connect the dots between price and total mission value.

In a pure LPTA world, you almost never had room to explain why a higher price made sense. In a best-value tradeoff, that’s exactly what evaluators need from you.

That does not mean you write an essay defending why you’re expensive. It means you show the relationship between the price you’re proposing and the outcome the customer cares about.

Maybe your price is higher because you’re using more senior staff in the first six months to accelerate transition and knowledge transfer. Maybe you build in extra redundancy to reduce the risk of outages. Maybe your training approach saves the agency internal labor that doesn’t show up in the contract line items.

Whatever it is, connect the dots. “Here is what we’re proposing. Here is what that costs. Here is the mission benefit you get from that structure.”

You’re giving the evaluation team ammunition for the tradeoff memo – the document where they justify picking you over a slightly cheaper, slightly riskier competitor.

Sam Fields:
 Now, here’s the part a lot of contractors miss.

You can’t wait until a single RFP drops to start behaving like a best-value vendor.

Evaluation culture is changing across the board. The FAR overhaul is updating the language around tradeoffs. GSA is pushing best-value as the default on MAS orders. Category management is steering spend toward Best-in-Class contracts that already bake in performance and risk criteria.

That means your entire footprint needs to reflect value, not just your proposal text.

Your SAM and small business profiles should clearly state where you’ve delivered outcomes, not just what you’re “capable of.” Your website should have at least a few mission-focused case studies. Your past performance library should be organized and ready so you’re not scrambling every time an RFP asks for three relevant examples.

If you operate as a lowest-price vendor in your branding and your pipeline, it’s very hard to suddenly flip into “best value” mode when a major opportunity lands.

So as you look ahead at your capture plans, ask yourself a simple question:

If a contracting officer had to write a tradeoff decision today between my company and my top competitor, what arguments would they have available to justify picking me, even if my price is not the lowest?

If you don’t like the answer, that’s your homework.

Sam Fields:
 As we wrap up, here’s the big takeaway.

Evaluation culture is changing, but the fundamentals haven’t: agencies still need contractors who deliver, who reduce risk, and who make their lives easier. Best value just gives them more freedom to choose those partners instead of being boxed into the cheapest technically acceptable offer.

Your job is to package your value so clearly, so concretely, and so credibly that when evaluators look at your proposal, the tradeoff decision almost writes itself.

And if you’d like help tightening that story, aligning your past performance, and making sure your profiles and capability statements reflect real value, FedBiz Access can support you. For over twenty-four years, we’ve helped small and mid-sized businesses compete and win in a best-value environment – from registrations and certifications to market research and proposal strategy.

Thanks for listening to FedBiz’5 – five minutes, countless opportunities.

Until next time, stay proactive, stay prepared, and keep winning in government contracting.