You just pinned anchors and now your Senior Chief is standing in your doorway: "I need you to draft Chief Harris's CHIEFEVAL by Friday. INSURV is next week and I don't have time." You've written EVALs before. Good EVALs. But Harris is an E7, and you have a nagging feeling that the formula you used for petty officers won't cut it here.

You're right, and not only because the expectations are higher. The CHIEFEVAL is a different form with a different layout, and the 2025 update changed where the words go.

Or maybe you're a Master Chief who's been writing CHIEFEVALs for years, watching your chiefs plateau at Must Promote while the ones written by your counterpart across the waterfront keep getting selected. The write-up is often the difference: how the trait comments are framed, how the summary opens, and whether the closing actually advocates.

This post shows you what works, with weak and strong versions of each part so the delta is obvious.

The CHIEFEVAL Is Its Own Form

BUPERSINST 1610.10H governs Navy evaluations and separates them by report type. EVALs for E1–E6 are on NAVPERS 1616/26. CHIEFEVALs for E7–E9 are on NAVPERS 1616/27. FITREPs for W2–O6 are on NAVPERS 1610/2, and O7–O8 use NAVPERS 1610/5. The 1610.10H revision updated the 1616/27, and NAVFIT98A version 33 carries the new layout:

Seven performance traits. Technical Mastery, Institutional Expertise, Professionalism, Integrity, Accountability, Deckplate Leadership and Team Effectiveness (blocks 33–39).
Comments under each trait. Each trait allows up to three bullet comments, six lines total. Each comment must stand on its own; a sentence can't run from one comment field into the next. White space is authorized.
Block 40, reporting senior comments. Now limited to six lines, down from 18. It should hold the opening statement, the closing statement and any soft breakout.
Block 42, summary ranking. The chief's ranking within the summary group, the hard breakout, is printed on the form.

So the old habit of one long narrative block doesn't fit anymore. Most of the evidence now lives in the trait comments, and block 40 is a short frame around it.

What Selection Boards Look For in Chiefs

For E1–E6, great EVALs show technical proficiency, mission impact and measurable results. That formula still applies for chiefs, but it's the floor, not the ceiling. The CHIEFEVAL traits themselves point to what else matters:

CPO Mess and institutional leadership. Mentoring E6 and below, running advancement programs, teaching Navy heritage, representing the Mess. Institutional Expertise and Professionalism are where these land.
Program ownership. Not task execution but owning a readiness domain, a training program or a cross-departmental function.
Command-level framing. Even a chief running a small work center should describe impact in terms of the command's readiness, not just the eight-person shop.

Chiefs who write E6-flavored bullets with an E7 name on top leave readers underwhelmed, even when the underlying performance was excellent. The framing is the job.

Trait Comments

The trait comments are where the proof lives. With three comments and six lines per trait, every comment has to be a complete, specific statement. BUPERSINST 1610.10H prefers bullet style and everyday language: give examples of performance and results, and quantify where you can.

Weak Trait Comment (Technical Mastery)

Performed outstanding maintenance on propulsion systems throughout the deployment and ensured the ship was always ready for operations.

There are no numbers, no specific events, no outcomes that can be verified or compared. "Always ready" tells a board member nothing they couldn't assume about any chief who deployed.

Strong Trait Comments (Technical Mastery)

Supervised all propulsion plant maintenance across a 271-day deployment with zero major casualties and zero port returns for unscheduled repair.

Isolated an incipient main reduction gear bearing failure during routine monitoring; directed in-place repair that avoided a 22-day depot availability.

Each comment is one accomplishment, short enough to fit two lines, and complete on its own. Together they show scale (271 days), a critical action (catching the bearing failure) and an outcome (no depot availability).

CPO Mess Comment: Weak vs. Strong (Institutional Expertise)

Weak:

Active member of the CPO Mess who played a role in mentoring junior Sailors and petty officers seeking advancement.

"Active member" and "played a role" are the polite way of saying the reporting senior ran out of things to say. This comment burns a line without making a case.

Strong:

Built and led a 10-week advancement study program for 22 petty officers; 16 advanced on the spring cycle after the command rate had fallen to 18%.

This comment shows she identified a problem, built a solution and produced a measurable result, all in one standalone statement.

Block 40: Opening and Closing

With six lines for block 40, the opening and closing have to be short. Don't repeat the trait comments here. Use the space to say where the chief stands and what should happen next.

Weak Opening

Chief Petty Officer Harris is a dedicated and hardworking Machinist's Mate who consistently demonstrates technical excellence and strong leadership throughout the evaluation period.

Nothing here is verifiable. "Dedicated," "hardworking" and "consistently demonstrates" are filler that appears on most of the stack. It also spends nearly two of the six lines saying nothing.

Strong Opening

My #1 of 6 Chief Petty Officers. Sole propulsion chief for a DDG through a 9-month deployment; built the CPO Mess mentorship program behind the command's best advancement cycle in a decade.

The strong version ranks her (a soft breakout, which the instruction authorizes), sets her scope and names a program she owns. The hard breakout in block 42 should tell the same story.

Weak Closing

MMC Harris has the potential to continue growing as a Chief Petty Officer and would benefit from the additional responsibilities and challenges that senior enlisted leadership brings.

"Has the potential" is about the weakest phrase you can put in a CHIEFEVAL closing. It signals doubt, and it takes up space block 40 doesn't have.

Strong Closing

Advance to Senior Chief now. Ready for a department LCPO billet at sea. Unreserved recommendation.

No hedging, no qualifiers. "Advance to Senior Chief now" is a direct instruction, not a suggestion. The forward look to a specific billet signals long-term confidence, and it fits in a line.

Five Mistakes That Hurt Chief Selections

1. Writing E6 bullets with an E7 name. If every comment is about personal technical execution and there's no CPO Mess, program-level or command-impact language, the board reads a very good petty officer.

2. Writing for the old layout. An 18-line narrative won't fit in a six-line block 40, and a comment that continues across trait fields isn't allowed. Put the evidence in the trait comments and keep block 40 for the opening, closing and breakout.

3. Trait grades that contradict the comments. If you're writing "best chief in the department" language but grading 3.0s, the report is unconvincing. The instruction warns against pairing outstanding comments with average marks, or the reverse.

4. A soft breakout that fights the hard breakout. Ranking in the comments is authorized, and phrases like "my #1 of" and "promote ahead of peers" carry real signal. With the hard breakout now printed in block 42, though, a block 40 ranking that doesn't match it undercuts both.

5. Soft quantification. "Supported 300 Sailors" is weaker than "sole chief for a 300-Sailor detachment, 218 consecutive days without relief." Same number, far more impact.

Put the Structure to Work

Getting the structure right is one problem. Getting the words out, especially when you're staring at seven trait blocks and a six-line block 40 with a deadline two days out, is another.

RapidEPR's Navy CHIEFEVAL generator lets you describe what your chief actually did and drafts trait comments and a block 40 summary, with prompts for the numbers that separate good comments from board-ready ones. Iterate until it sounds like you wrote it, and check it against BUPERSINST 1610.10H before it goes up the chain.

If you're newer to the EVAL format in general, the post on writing strong military evaluation bullets covers the foundational structure used across all branches. And if you're struggling to find the numbers that make a bullet land, how to quantify accomplishments when you don't have hard numbers walks through six categories that surface metrics in almost any rate or job.

A competitive CHIEFEVAL is not about flattery. It's about specific, verifiable evidence arranged so a board member who has never met your chief walks away with no doubt about what they're advancing. The trait comments prove it, and block 40 bets on it. You have the structure now, so go use it.

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Navy CHIEFEVAL Examples: Opening, Bullets, and Closing