Analysing awarded contracts: what you can learn from past awards

Most companies focus the bulk of their attention on new tenders: what’s been published, what fits us, what should we bid on? That makes sense — new tenders are where the revenue is. But there’s a second stream of information that’s at least as valuable and consistently overlooked: awarded contracts.

Every award is a data point. The winner’s name, the awarded amount, the number of bidders, the scores on the award criteria — these are all signals you can use to improve your next bid. Companies that do this systematically build a knowledge advantage that compounds with each submission.

What information does an award contain?

The contract award notice

After every award, the contracting authority publishes a contract award notice. On e-Procurement (Belgium), TenderNed (Netherlands), and TED (EU-wide), you’ll typically find:

• The name of the winning bidder
• The total awarded contract value
• The number of bids received
• The procedure followed (open, restricted, negotiated)
• The award criteria and their weightings

That’s already a lot. You know who won, at what price, and how much competition there was. For lowest-price contracts, that single data point is enough to tell you whether you were in the ballpark.

The opening report

In open procedures, all bids are opened at a fixed time. The opening report lists the names of every bidder and their total prices. This is the richest source: not just the winner, but the complete competitive landscape in one document.

In Belgium, opening reports are published on e-Procurement or can be requested from the contracting authority. In the Netherlands, they’re available via TenderNed for the relevant procedure.

The reasoned award decision

If you submitted a bid, you’re entitled to the reasoned award decision. This goes beyond the notice: it describes how your bid scored on each criterion and what made the winning bid stronger — without revealing commercially sensitive details.

This is the most valuable document you can obtain. It tells you not just that you lost, but why. And “why” is the information that improves your next bid.

What you learn when you analyse awards

Price levels and trends

By tracking awarded amounts over time for a given sector or contract type, you build a picture of what the market is willing to pay. This cuts both ways:

If you’re pricing too high, you’ll know. If the average award price for office cleaning in Flanders runs €14-16 per m² per year, and you’re calculating €19, you know you won’t win on price — unless you can make the difference on quality.

If you’re pricing too low, you’ll know that too. A price that’s structurally below market raises questions: is this an abnormally low tender? Can the bidder actually deliver? Contracting authorities are required to investigate abnormally low bids, and tenders that don’t survive that scrutiny are excluded.

Who wins where?

By analysing award data per contracting authority, patterns emerge. Which companies win at which public bodies? Are there authorities where the same supplier wins consistently? That might signal an established relationship, specific selection requirements that narrow the field, or simply a company that delivers strong work.

This information is actionable. If you see that a particular competitor has won three consecutive framework agreements at a specific authority, that’s a signal to reconsider your strategy: do you want to invest extra here, or redirect your energy to contracts where the playing field is more level?

How the market is moving

Awarded contracts are also a barometer for trends. Rising volumes in a particular sector, shifts from one-off contracts to framework agreements, new contracting authorities entering the market — these are signals that feed your future strategy.

A municipality issuing its first ICT framework agreement for cloud migration will need to re-tender in three to four years. A hospital group switching from purchasing to leasing medical equipment will likely repeat that pattern. Those who track these shifts are ready when the next tender comes.

Sizing up competitors

Award data gives you an objective picture of your competitors. Not what they claim on their website or at a trade fair, but what they actually win. Revenue from public contracts, types of contracts, geographic spread, average contract size — these are all data points extractable from public sources.

Combine that with financial data from annual accounts (revenue, headcount, solvency) and you have a solid competitor profile. Based not on impressions, but on facts.

How to approach it

Step 1: Define your scope

Determine which contracts you want to track. It doesn’t need to be broad. Start with your core sector and primary region. If you’re active in IT services for Flemish government bodies, track all awarded IT contracts at Flemish public institutions. That’s already a focused enough frame to spot patterns.

Step 2: Collect systematically

The information is public but scattered. Award notices sit on e-Procurement, TenderNed, and TED. Opening reports sometimes need to be requested. Annual accounts are at the National Bank (Belgium) or Chamber of Commerce (Netherlands). It’s not one click — it’s a process.

Keep a simple structure: per contract, record the contracting authority, the winner, the amount, the number of bids, and the main award criteria. After twenty to thirty contracts, you’ll have a dataset that genuinely tells you something.

Step 3: Look for patterns

Don’t examine individual contracts in isolation. Look for repetitions: the same winner at the same authority, rising or falling price levels, shifts in procedure types. The value lies in aggregation, not in individual data points.

Step 4: Translate into action

Analysis without action is wasted time. Convert your insights into concrete decisions:

• Which contracting authorities offer the best opportunity for you, given the competitive landscape?
• What price levels should you target to be competitive?
• Which quality aspects make the difference in BPQR awards in your sector?
• Which contracts are expiring soon and present a re-tender opportunity?

The role of TenderWolf

Manually tracking awarded contracts is feasible when you’re following ten contracts per year. It becomes unworkable when you want to monitor hundreds of awards per quarter, across multiple sectors and countries.

TenderWolf aggregates award data and makes it searchable. Company profiles show, per competitor, which contracts they’ve won, at which authorities, and in what price range. TenderForecast flags expiring contracts and re-tender opportunities. Opening reports and award notices are available through the contract details.

The goal isn’t to replace your analysis, but to automate the data collection — so you spend your time interpreting and deciding, not searching and copying.

---

Further reading

• Award criteria: price and quality — how contracting authorities weigh price against quality
• Building a winning tender strategy — from analysis to a bid that scores
• The bid/no-bid decision — when to bid, when not to