The edge
How to read award notices for competitor intelligence
Award notices are the free public record of who won and against how many bidders. Use them to profile your rivals and to price the next bid honestly.
In short
- A contract award notice names the winner, gives a value and, in most regulated systems, states how many tenders were received. It is published whether or not you saw the tender.
- EU award notices under eForms carry BT-759 Received Submissions Count with BT-760 Received Submissions Type, so you see how many bids arrived and how many were ruled inadmissible.
- UK contract award notices under the Procurement Act 2023 state the number of tenders submitted and the number assessed, and above £5 million they name every unsuccessful supplier whose tender was assessed.
- US federal award data moved out of FPDS into SAM.gov in February 2026. The SAM.gov search needs a free account; USAspending.gov does not.
- Published values are often estimates, ceilings or framework maximums rather than the price the winner will be paid.
A contract award notice tells you which supplier won a public contract, what it was worth, how many bidders it beat and, in several systems, how many of those bids were thrown out before anyone scored them. It is published after the fact, on the portals you already watch, and almost nobody in your market reads it.
That is the opportunity. Tender notices are competitive by the time you see them. Award notices are not, because your rivals are busy reading tender notices.
What an award notice always contains
Four things are effectively always there: the buyer, a description of what was bought with its classification code, the winner's legal name, and a value. Everything beyond that varies by system, and the variation is where the useful material sits.
Anatomy of an award notice
In the EU these fields are defined in the eForms schema and published through Tenders Electronic Daily. The winning tender's price is BT-720 Tender Value, sitting beside BT-710 Tender Value Lowest and BT-711 Tender Value Highest, which give you the spread of what the buyer received. Submissions are counted in BT-759 Received Submissions Count, always paired with BT-760 Received Submissions Type, whose codelist separates plain tenders from tenders by micro, small or medium tenderers, tenders from outside the European Economic Area, and tenders verified as inadmissible. The official reference for competition results lists the rest, including BT-773 Subcontracting and BT-635 Buyer Review Requests Count, a quiet record of how many people complained.
The UK went further in 2025. Under regulation 27 of the Procurement Regulations 2024, a contract award notice must state the total number of tenders submitted by the authority's deadline, the total number assessed, and how many came from small and medium-sized enterprises or value-driven non-governmental organisations. Above £5 million it must also name each supplier that submitted an assessed tender and was not awarded the contract, which is a published list of the people you lost to. The notice appears before signature and starts a standstill period of at least eight working days. A contract details notice follows within 30 days of signature, or 120 days for light touch contracts, and above £5 million a copy of the contract is published within 90 days. Find a Tender documents the sequence.
US federal awards work differently. The competition data sits on the contract action record: the number of offers received, and an extent competed code that USAspending.gov defines from A for full and open competition through to G for not competed under the simplified acquisition threshold. Since February 2026 the public search has lived in the contract data area of SAM.gov, which covers contract actions valued at $10,000 or more and requires a free account. USAspending.gov carries the same records and does not.
| What you want | EU (eForms) | UK (Procurement Act 2023) | US federal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Organisation and size band | Name, address, SME status | Vendor name, UEI, size |
| Value | BT-720, plus lowest and highest | Estimated contract value | Obligated and potential |
| Bids | BT-759 with BT-760 category | Submitted and assessed | Offers received |
| Losing bidders | Not published | Named above £5 million | Not published |
| Subcontracting | BT-773, BT-555 | Contract details notice | Subcontracting plans |
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What the number of bids tells you about a buyer
The bid count is the most under-used number in public procurement, because it is the only field that describes the competition rather than the contract.
One tender received on an openly advertised procedure means either the specification was shaped around a supplier already in place or the opportunity was invisible to the market. Those point in opposite directions, and ten minutes with the tender documents tells you which. Two or three is normal in specialised categories, and that is where your effort earns most per hour. Six or more, repeatedly, from the same buyer in the same category, says the work has been commoditised. Those bands are reading habits rather than published statistics, so calibrate them against a year of awards in your own CPV codes before trusting them.
The sharper signal is the gap between bids submitted and bids assessed. A UK notice showing nine tenders submitted and four assessed means five bidders failed on compliance rather than on merit, so this buyer punishes sloppiness more than it rewards flair. The EU equivalent is the count carried under the inadmissible categories of BT-760. Where the gap is consistently wide, the useful instruction to your team is to finish two days early. Track the counts over time too, because a category whose median has climbed over three years is one where margin is being competed away.
How to build a competitor profile from award notices
Pick the three or four firms you actually lose to, not the market leaders. Fill this in for each, then update it quarterly.
| Line | What to record | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Registered name and number, not the trading name | Winner details |
| Size band | Micro, small, medium or large | EU winner size, UK SME flag |
| Buyers served | Every authority, with an award count each | Search by supplier name |
| Category codes | CPV, NAICS or PSC codes they win under | Classification on the notice |
| Geography | Countries and places of performance | Place of performance |
| Sizes and terms | Smallest, median and largest value; months plus options | Value fields, contract dates |
| Vehicles | Frameworks and dynamic markets they sit on | Framework award notices |
| Bids they face | Tenders received where they win | BT-759, UK counts, offers received |
| Head to head | Procedures where you both bid, and the outcome | Your bid log |
| Subcontracting | Declared share and named subcontractors | BT-773 and BT-555 |
| Win pattern | Awards per year for three years, and contracts ending within 24 months | Award search by year |
| Stress signals | Challenges, modifications, terminations | Change and termination notices |
| Your angle | One sentence on where you beat them | Judgement |
Budget half an hour per rival per quarter once the first version exists. Two lines do most of the work. The contract end dates you collect feed the expiring contract method, which is how you get in front of a re-tender before the tender notice appears. The head-to-head record stops you re-fighting a battle you have already lost twice on the same ground.
What published contract values do not tell you
Published values are the field bidders trust most and should trust least.
A UK contract award notice publishes the estimated value of the contract, not the price the winner tendered, and an estimate is the buyer's number set before the competition. EU notices are better, because BT-720 carries the winning tender itself, but a framework award shows a maximum value rather than any expectation of spend. Treat a framework agreement ceiling as legal headroom and nothing else. In US data, USAspending's current award amount is the total obligated to date including the base and exercised options, which is not the same as what the contract could eventually reach.
Three habits keep the benchmarking honest. Divide by the term to get an annual run rate. Read the lot structure, because one notice can cover several lots with several winners and a headline value that sums all of them. Check whether options sit inside the number.
How to spot an incumbent and judge whether it is vulnerable
Before you bid, search the buyer's award history in your category for the last five to eight years. If the same supplier appears across consecutive terms, you are bidding against an incumbent whether or not the tender documents say so.
Entrenchment and vulnerability look different in the record. An entrenched incumbent shows a long unbroken run with one buyer, low bid counts in their wins, and values that grow through modifications rather than through re-tender. A vulnerable one shows the buyer splitting a contract into lots, a shorter term than last time, market engagement well before expiry, or rising bid counts in their recent wins elsewhere. In the UK, contract details notices above £5 million describe the key performance indicators, and performance against them becomes publishable.
None of this is proof. It is a prior, and it should change how much effort you spend.
How to search award notices by CPV, buyer and supplier
On TED, filter to contract award notices and search by CPV code, buyer country and publication date. Both advanced and expert search let you save the query, and there is a public API.
On SAM.gov, use the contracting search with NAICS and PSC filters, entity name, CAGE or UEI, place of performance and date signed. Searching by vendor name is the fastest route into a competitor profile, and the SAM.gov source page covers account setup. USAspending.gov answers most supplier questions without a login.
In the UK, Find a Tender holds notices published under the Procurement Act 2023 and has a separate view for awarded contracts. Procurements started before 24 February 2025 continue under the previous rules, so their award notices remain on Contracts Finder. Most national portals have an equivalent filter, usually labelled awarded or results.
How to turn this into a bid decision
Award intelligence earns its keep at two moments.
The first is qualification. Add two lines to your bid/no-bid checklist: how many tenders this buyer received last time in this category, and who won it. A category where the last three awards went to one firm against two bidders is a different proposition from one that draws eight bidders and a new winner each time.
The second is partnering. Where a notice shows declared subcontracting, or where a UK notice above £5 million names the other assessed bidders, you have a list of firms already qualified for this buyer's work. Approaching the winner as a specialist subcontractor within days of the award, before delivery mobilisation hardens, is one of the highest-yield calls in this job, and it is covered properly in winning without being the prime.
What award notices will never tell you
They will not give you your competitors' scores. In the EU there is no field for the evaluation of losing tenders. In the UK, assessment summaries setting out the score for each award criterion go to every supplier that submitted an assessed tender and to nobody else, so if you want yours, you have to have bid.
They also arrive late and incomplete. EU rules require a contract award notice within 30 days of the conclusion of a contract, but contracts called off under a framework need no individual notice and member states may allow such notices to be grouped quarterly, so a live incumbent relationship can be months old before you see a trace of it. Awards under the publication thresholds never appear at all: in the UK a below-threshold contract is only notifiable at £12,000 for most central government authorities and £30,000 otherwise, and below-threshold procurement sits outside TED by design.
Treat the award record as a strong sample rather than a census. If you want to know how much of your market it covers, that is what the coverage audit measures.
Common questions
How do I find out who won a public contract?
Search the award notices on the portal that published the tender. On TED, filter to contract award notices by CPV code and date. In the UK, use Find a Tender for procurements started from 24 February 2025 and Contracts Finder for older ones. For US federal contracts, use the contracting search on SAM.gov or USAspending.gov.
Do award notices say how many companies bid?
Usually yes in regulated European procurement, and yes in US federal data. EU award notices under eForms carry BT-759 Received Submissions Count with BT-760 Received Submissions Type. UK contract award notices under the Procurement Act 2023 state both the number of tenders submitted and the number assessed, and US contract action records carry the number of offers received alongside an extent competed code.
Can I see the names of the losing bidders?
Only in specific circumstances. UK contract award notices for contracts above £5 million must name each supplier that submitted an assessed tender and was not awarded the contract. EU award notices identify the winner but not the unsuccessful tenderers, and US federal award records do not name losing offerors.
Is the published contract value what the winner actually gets paid?
Often not. UK contract award notices publish the buyer's estimated value rather than the winning tender price, and framework notices publish a maximum value that is a ceiling rather than a forecast. EU notices come closest, because BT-720 records the value of the winning tender itself.
How far behind is award data?
In the EU a contract award notice must be sent within 30 days of the conclusion of the contract, so a month is the floor. Call-offs under framework agreements need no individual notice and may be grouped quarterly where a member state allows it, which pushes part of the record months behind reality. Assume anything awarded in the last quarter is only partly visible.