A contractor lists three referees. The panel calls the first. The person named left the council eighteen months ago. They call the second, who remembers the job but not the contractor’s name and has to look it up. The third answers, is complimentary, and cannot recall whether the project finished on time.

Nothing dishonest happened. The submission still lost marks on the criterion it was strongest on, because the one part of it that could be verified was not managed.

The only verifiable part of your bid

Most of a tender is assertion. Your methodology is a plan, your programme is an intention, your price is an offer. An evaluator assesses them on plausibility.

Past project experience is different. It describes things that actually happened, to real clients, who can be telephoned. That makes it the most credible section of your submission and the most dangerous one to handle carelessly.

It is also usually the heaviest-weighted non-price criterion on civil work, and it feeds directly into prequalification, where previous performance sits alongside technical, managerial and financial capacity as a core assessment limb — see our guides to TfNSW prequalification and civil contractor prequalification in Australia.

Selecting projects: relevance beats recency

The default is to submit the three most recent projects. That is a filing decision, not a bid decision.

Select for comparability to the tender in front of you, then for recency. A four-year-old project that matches this scope closely is worth more than last month’s job that does not.

Selection factor	Weight	Why
Scope similarity	Highest	Same work type, same techniques, same returnables. This is what the criterion asks
Scale similarity	High	Within roughly half to double the tender value. A $90K job does not evidence a $1.5M one
Client type	High	Council work evidences council work. A private developer job proves less about government contract administration
Constraint similarity	Medium–high	Live traffic, restricted access, environmental sensitivity, working near services. Often the real difficulty of the job
Recency	Medium	Matters, but usually a tiebreaker between comparable projects. Check whether the tender sets a window — many require projects within five years
Outcome	Medium	A project that went well and whose referee will say so. See §08

Two rules that follow:

• Submit the number asked for, not more. If the tender asks for three, three strong entries beat six of mixed quality — the weak ones drag the average and signal you cannot tell the difference.
• Vary the set between tenders. A fixed set of three projects submitted to every bid means most of them are irrelevant most of the time.

What comparability actually means

Evaluators are not looking for an identical project. They are looking for evidence that the difficult parts of this job are things you have already done.

The practical technique: before selecting, list the three or four things that make this project hard. Then choose projects that evidence those specific things, and say so.

What makes this job hard	What the reference needs to show
Deep trenching adjacent to live services	A project with comparable depth and service congestion — not just “drainage”
Staged construction under live traffic	A project delivered under traffic with staged closures, and how the staging worked
An accreditation gate, such as water authority approval	A project delivered under that accreditation — see water authority panels
Tight programme with a fixed completion date	A project completed to a hard deadline, stated as such
Environmental sensitivity	A project with comparable controls and an incident-free environmental record
Heavy documentation and handover requirements	A project with the same asset data or conformance obligations — see practical completion and handover

This is the same discipline as the relevance clause in a key personnel CV: never make the evaluator infer the connection. State it.

Writing a project reference that scores

Most project references are descriptions. A scoring entry is an argument with evidence attached, and it runs in a predictable order.

1. Project name, client and location.
2. The numbers — contract value, dates, duration, and your role. See §05.
3. Scope, in the tender’s own vocabulary. If this tender says “kerb and channel”, do not write “concrete edging”. Matching language helps an evaluator map your experience onto their criterion.
4. The relevance statement. One or two sentences explicitly connecting this project to the tendered work — the highest-value part of the entry.
5. A difficulty and how you handled it. One specific challenge and the response. This is what separates a memorable entry from a competent one, and it evidences capability far better than a claim of competence.
6. The outcome, stated verifiably. Completed on time, no lost-time injuries, no outstanding defects at handover, retention released.
7. Referee details. Name, current position, organisation, phone and email — checked. See §06.

On point 5, keep it proportionate and factual. “Encountered rock over 60 metres of the alignment; notified as a latent condition, agreed a revised methodology with the superintendent, and completed within the extended programme” tells an evaluator you can handle a real event through a proper process. That is worth more than any adjective — and it is the process set out in our guide to latent conditions.

The numbers that have to be there

Missing numbers are the most common defect in this section, and each omission removes an evaluator’s ability to score.

Number	Why it is needed	Common error
Contract value	Establishes scale comparability	Omitted, or a range. State the final value including variations, and say so
Start and completion dates	Recency, and whether it fell inside the tender’s stated window	Year only. Month and year is standard
Duration	Lets the evaluator sanity-check your programme for this job	Omitted, so the reference cannot support the programme
Your role	Head contractor, subcontractor, joint venture participant	Left ambiguous. Presenting subcontract work as head contract experience is a serious credibility risk
Key quantities	Directly comparable to the tendered quantities	Omitted. “3,400m of DN300–DN600 pipe, 46 pits” evidences scale far better than a dollar value

The role row deserves emphasis. If you held a $400,000 drainage package on a $6M project, say exactly that. Listing the project at $6M and letting the reader assume is the kind of thing a referee call exposes immediately, and it damages everything else in the submission.

Choosing the referee, not just the project

The best project with the wrong referee scores worse than a good project with the right one.

• Pick someone who saw the work. The superintendent’s representative or project engineer who was on site can speak to delivery. A procurement officer who only saw the paperwork cannot.
• Confirm they are still in the role. This is the single most common failure and it takes one phone call. Council and agency staff move constantly.
• Check the contact details every time. Direct line, not a switchboard. A referee an evaluator cannot reach is a referee who did not respond.
• Prefer a referee who will actually pick up. A senior person who never answers their phone is worse than an accessible one slightly lower down.
• Ask permission, every time. Not once, three years ago — for this tender. It is courteous, and it warns them a call is coming.
• Avoid overusing one referee. A council officer receiving their fifth call about you in six months becomes less useful and, reasonably, less enthusiastic.

Where a project was delivered as a subcontractor, the head contractor’s project manager is the right referee — and cultivating those relationships is part of the strategy in our guide to subcontracting to Tier 1 civil contractors.

Briefing a referee without coaching them

There is a clear line here. Telling a referee what to say is improper and, if it emerges, seriously damaging. Making sure they have the facts to hand is ordinary professional courtesy.

A proper briefing email, sent when you submit:

• Says you have named them and asks whether that is still acceptable.
• Identifies the project — name, dates, value, scope. People genuinely forget, particularly on a job that ran smoothly two years ago.
• Says what the new tender is, in one line, so they understand what they are being asked about.
• Confirms their current details.
• Tells them roughly when a call might come.
• Does not suggest what to say. No talking points, no draft answers.

That email takes three minutes and fixes the entire opening scenario. It is also the point at which you find out that your referee has left, in time to substitute someone else.

One further habit: ask for a written reference at practical completion, while the project is fresh and the people who saw the work are still there. It costs nothing to ask, and a written reference survives staff turnover in a way a phone contact does not. Our guide to practical completion and the final claim puts this on the completion checklist for exactly this reason.

When your most relevant project ended badly

Every contractor has one — the job that was technically perfect and commercially painful, or that finished late for reasons that were not entirely theirs.

Three options, in order of preference.

1. Use a different project. Usually right if a genuinely comparable alternative exists.
2. Use it, and address the issue directly. Where it is the only relevant project, or where the client is the one you are now tendering to and they already know, silence is worse than disclosure. State what happened factually, what caused it, what you did, and what changed as a result. An honest account of a difficult job, with a documented process response, can score better than a bland account of an easy one.
3. Omit it and hope. The weakest option, particularly where you are tendering to the same client. Evaluation panels have institutional memory, and prequalification systems carry performance records.

A note on disputes. If a project ended in a formal dispute, take advice before describing it in a tender — there may be confidentiality obligations under the settlement. Where you cannot discuss it, choose a different project rather than writing something evasive.

When you do not have the experience

The genuine problem for a growing business, and the one this criterion creates: you need the experience to win the work, and the work to get the experience.

• Use adjacent experience and argue the transfer explicitly. If you have not done this exact work but have done work requiring the same skills, plant and controls, say what transfers and why.
• Use subcontract experience honestly. A package delivered under a head contractor is real experience — describe it accurately as a subcontract role and it counts.
• Use personnel experience where the tender allows. Where your supervisor delivered comparable work at a previous employer, that is legitimate capability evidence — attach it to the person rather than the company. See key personnel CVs and org charts.
• Aggregate smaller projects where the tender permits, to evidence cumulative scale in the same work type.
• Be realistic in the go/no-go. Where the experience gap is the difference between winning and losing, that is a decision input rather than a writing problem — see our go/no-go framework and our guide to winning your first government contract.

Formal performance reports

On agency work, past performance is often not just a referee call. Contract performance reports are issued during and after delivery, and they follow you — into future evaluations and into prequalification renewals.

• Ask for your performance report at the end of a contract. Many contractors never see the report written about them.
• Read it, and respond in writing if it is wrong. An unchallenged adverse report becomes the record.
• Use good reports as evidence. A favourable performance report attached to a project reference is stronger than a referee’s phone number.
• Treat it as a reason to administer contracts well. The report reflects claims behaviour, documentation quality and programme performance — which is one of the returns on the discipline in our guide to contract administration for civil SMEs.

Requesting a tender debrief after an unsuccessful bid is the related habit: it is where you find out whether past performance was the reason you did not win.

Building the project library

This section is the most reusable content you own, and it decays fastest. Capture it at completion, not at tender time — the approach in our guide to building a tender content library.

A project record, written in the month the job finishes, should carry:

• Client, project name, location, contract number.
• Contract value at award and final value, with the reason for the difference.
• Start and completion dates, and the programmed duration.
• Scope description, and key quantities.
• Your role, and the key personnel who delivered it.
• Constraints and difficulties, and how they were handled.
• Outcome — safety record, defects at handover, whether retention was released.
• Referee name, role, and contact details as at completion.
• Photographs, and any written reference or performance report.

Then review referee contact details once a year. It is twenty minutes across a whole project list and it prevents the most common failure in this section.

Checklist

• Selected for comparability to this tender, then recency?
• Exactly the number of projects requested?
• Does each entry carry value, dates, duration, role and key quantities?
• Is your role stated unambiguously — head contractor or subcontractor?
• Does each entry contain an explicit relevance statement?
• Does each contain one specific difficulty and the response?
• Are outcomes stated verifiably rather than as adjectives?
• Is every referee still in the role, with checked direct contact details?
• Has each referee been asked for permission for this tender?
• Have they been briefed on the facts without being coached?
• Does the tender set a recency window your projects fall inside?
• Is the scope described in the tender’s own vocabulary?

The short version

• This is the only part of your bid a panel can verify. Manage it accordingly.
• Select for comparability first. A relevant older project beats a recent irrelevant one.
• Numbers are not optional — value, dates, duration, role and quantities. Missing numbers cannot be scored.
• State your role precisely. Presenting a subcontract package as head contract experience is exposed by one phone call.
• Confirm the referee is still in the role and brief them on the facts. Never coach them.
• Ask for a written reference at practical completion — it survives staff turnover in a way a phone number does not.

Sources and further reading

This guide is general information for Australian civil construction businesses and is not legal advice. Requirements for project references, recency windows and referee details are set by the individual tender. All examples are illustrative and do not describe real projects, clients or individuals. Always work from the tender documents.

• Transport for NSW — National Prequalification System for Civil (Road and Bridge) Construction Guidelines: classification based on the contractor’s technical and managerial expertise, financial capacity and previous performance. Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads — TIPDS Volume 3: Prequalification System: the National Prequalification System’s objective of enabling participating authorities to assess contractor capabilities and identify those with the requisite technical, managerial and financial capacity. Both sourced in full in our guides to TfNSW prequalification and TMR prequalification in Queensland.
• Business Queensland — Glossary of terms used in government tendering, and Australian Tenders — The Tender Process: From Start to Finish: the role of evaluation panels in assessing tender responses against stated criteria, including verification of claimed experience. Referenced in full in our guide to how government tenders are scored.