Yes, in Section E. The SF330 lets a key person list up to five relevant projects, including work done at a previous employer, and provides a check box to disclose which ones were performed with the current firm. What you generally cannot do is move that project into Section F, which describes your team's experience rather than one person's.
The Question Firms Actually Ask
A senior engineer joined your firm last year. At her previous employer she was design lead on the exact kind of interchange reconstruction this RFP wants. Your firm has never done one. Can you use it, and where?
The answer is more permissive than most teams assume in one place and stricter in another, and the SF330 instructions are explicit about both. People change firms, and the form was built for it. Its job is to keep the record straight about who did the work and under whose roof. The rest of the form is covered in the section-by-section guide.
What Section E Block 19 Allows
Block 19 asks for "up to five projects in which the person had a significant role that demonstrates the person's capability relevant to her/his proposed role in this contract."
Two clauses do the work. The projects show the person's capability, and the person needs a significant role. Neither says the project belongs to your firm.
The instructions say so directly. The Block 19 projects "do not necessarily have to be any of the projects presented in Section F for the project team if the person was not involved in any of those projects or the person worked on other projects that were more relevant than the team projects in Section F."
So the engineer's interchange goes in her resume. The instructions describe the check box as indicating "if the project was performed with any office of the current firm." Hers was not, so it stays unchecked.
Leaving that box unchecked is not a penalty. It is disclosure, and it tells a panel that a qualified person brought relevant experience with her. A checked box that turns out to be wrong tells them something else.
Note the phrase "any office." Block 14b likewise counts years with the current firm "but not necessarily the same branch office." Work your firm did out of another office still counts.
Why the Same Project Usually Cannot Go in Section F
Section F asks a different question. It wants the projects that "best illustrate proposed team's qualifications for this contract," and tells you to "select projects where multiple team members worked together, if possible."
Block 25 then closes the door. It asks you to "indicate which firms (or branch offices, if appropriate) on the project team were involved in the example project, and their roles," in the same order as Section C.
Section C is your proposed team. If neither your firm nor any of your subconsultants worked on that interchange, there is no honest entry for Block 25, and the project has no place in Section F.
This is the line firms cross, usually without deciding to. Somebody sees a strong project in a resume, moves it into the example-project list because it fits the scope, and fills Block 25 with the Section C firm names. Nothing stops you; the form records what you claimed.
What the Section G Matrix Actually Claims
Section G is the cross-reference, and it carries a rule most teams do not know. The matrix maps key personnel from Section E against example projects from Section F, and Block 28 says where the marks go: "place an 'X' under the project key number for participation in the same or similar role."
Not participation. Participation in the same or similar role.
That converts every X from a presence claim into a role-equivalence claim. If your proposed project manager was a staff engineer on that project, the X claims a role the record does not support.
Sections E, F, and G describe the same facts three different ways, so a panel reading a column against a resume sees an inconsistency without hunting for it.
Three Distinctions That Get Firms in Trouble
Almost every attribution problem is one of these three, and the form surfaces each one somewhere.
| Distinction | The claim that goes wrong | Where the form catches it |
|---|---|---|
| Proposed vs delivered | Work designed but never built, or a selection never awarded, described as completed | Block 22 wants the year completed, left blank and explained if not |
| Prime vs subconsultant | Drainage design on a highway job written to read as leading it | Block 25 wants each firm's role, in Section C order |
| Individual vs firm | A prior-employer project counted as firm experience, or firm experience as one person's | The Block 19 check box, and Section G's "same or similar role" |
The form already asks the disambiguating question in every case. These are rarely arguments about what is true. They are places where nobody looked up which record says so.
What Happens If You Get It Wrong
Start with the likeliest consequence: a selection panel stops trusting the package.
Panels read a lot of these. They notice when a resume describes a role the project's own description does not support, or when a firm's example projects outrun its staff. They rarely write "we think this is overstated" in a debrief. They score what they can verify, and an unverifiable claim gets discounted rather than challenged. Several of the other failure modes that cost points work the same way.
There is a formal dimension too. Blocks 31 and 32 require an authorized representative of the prime or joint venture to sign, and the instructions say that "signing attests that the information provided is current and factual." That is a certification on a federal submittal by a named person at your firm, and a genuinely contested claim becomes a conversation for counsel rather than a proposal team. The reason to get this right is that you never want to have it.
The Fix Is Data Hygiene, Not Judgment Calls
Notice what none of this required. No ethical gray area, no close call. Every question the form asks has one correct answer, and it is a matter of record.
Firms get it wrong because the record is scattered across old proposals, a shared drive, and whoever has been there longest. When that is the source, attribution becomes recollection under deadline pressure, and recollection drifts toward the answer the pursuit needs.
A qualifications library that stores the firm of record and the role alongside every project is the fix. If the engineer's interchange is stored with her prior employer attached, the check box answers itself. That is the shape RFPM.ai keeps firm data in, though the discipline matters more than the tool, and your team still decides which people and projects belong in a pursuit.
Two habits make it hold: keep staff qualifications current at the source rather than in the last proposal that used them, so one record does not fork into several versions, and keep Part II aligned with what Part I asserts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an SF330 resume include projects from a previous employer?
Yes. Block 19 asks for up to five projects where the person had a significant role demonstrating capability relevant to their proposed role. The instructions say these need not be projects from Section F. Use the check box to indicate whether each was performed with any office of the current firm.
Does leaving the "with current firm" box unchecked hurt you?
No. It is disclosure, not a deduction. An unchecked box tells the panel a qualified person brought relevant experience from elsewhere, which is normal in this industry. The risk runs the other direction: a checked box that turns out to be wrong costs credibility across the whole submittal.
Can we list a project in Section F if only our new hire worked on it?
Generally no. Section F describes the proposed team's experience, and Block 25 asks which firms from Section C were involved and in what roles. If none of your team's firms worked on it, there is no accurate entry to make. The project belongs in that person's Section E resume instead.
What does an X in the Section G matrix actually mean?
More than participation. Block 28 says to place an X for participation "in the same or similar role." An X claims the person performed a role on that project comparable to the one you are proposing them for, so a marked cell for someone in a junior role at the time overstates the record.