How to Research a Contracting Authority Before You Bid: 7 Things to Check Before Entering a Tender
Jędrzej Stoiński
Customer Success Manager at Minerva, helping companies make better use of tender data in their day-to-day operations. He combines experience in B2B customer service and sales with a practical understanding of contractors’ needs. He helps companies structure their bidding processes and make better-informed decisions in future tenders.
Before your bid team starts pricing an offer, it pays to know who you are up against and what is at stake. Researching the contracting authority answers a handful of concrete questions: what this public body buys and how often, at what price levels it awarded similar contracts, which suppliers bid and win there, what it plans to buy in the coming months and whether its procedures have ended up before a review body. Below are 7 things worth checking before you decide to bid, and where to find them.
What is contracting authority research
Contracting authority research means reviewing a public buyer's procurement history before you submit a bid: which contracts it awarded, at what value, to which suppliers and under what level of competition. The goal is to judge whether a given tender fits your company's capabilities and what your realistic chances of winning are.
All of this information is public. Contracting authorities publish contract notices, bid opening records and award results, and review body rulings are publicly available as well. The challenge is fragmentation: information about a single authority sits in several places and has to be pieced together by hand.
Buyer profile vs. contracting authority profile: what is the difference
The two terms sound alike but describe different things. A buyer profile is the website or e-procurement platform where the contracting authority runs its procedures and publishes tender documents. This is where you download the documents and submit clarification questions. The contracting authority profile in Minerva is a single view of that public body's procurement history, built from data on many procedures.
| Buyer profile | Contracting authority profile in Minerva | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The authority's website or e-procurement platform | An analytical view of the authority's procurement history |
| Who runs it | The contracting authority | Minerva, based on public procurement data |
| What it is for | Downloading documents, asking questions, submitting bids | Assessing the authority and the competition before deciding to bid |
| What you find there | Current procedures and their documents | Past and current procedures, bid prices, winners, procurement plans, review rulings |
If you want to get your tender sources in order, see our guide on where to find public tenders in Europe.
7 things to check about a contracting authority before you bid
1. What the authority buys and how often
The breakdown of purchases by CPV code shows whether your scope is routine for this authority or a one-off. A public body that tenders similar contracts every year has settled requirements and a consistent way of evaluating bids. That makes your offer easier to prepare and opens the door to recurring revenue in the years ahead.
2. What prices were bid in previous procedures
Bid prices from earlier tenders for a similar scope show where the market usually lands and how wide the gap is between the lowest and the highest offer. This helps you judge whether the authority's budget is realistic for your cost structure.
Historical prices are market context. Your team always prices the offer based on its own costs and the current tender documents.
3. Who bids and who wins
The list of suppliers that bid and win with a given authority tells you a lot about the level of competition. If the same few companies keep appearing in similar procedures, this usually reflects specialisation, a regional presence or simply a narrow market. For you, it shows who you are really competing with and what to expect from their bids.
4. How many bids are usually submitted
The number of bids in past procedures helps you estimate your odds. Our analysis of more than 420,000 public procurement proceedings in Poland shows that 40.3% of contract lots are decided with a single bid, and the median number of bids per lot is 2. For a specific authority the figure can be noticeably higher or lower, so it is worth checking its own history.
5. What the authority plans to buy
Procurement plans and prior information notices reveal upcoming procedures before the contract notice is published. A company that knows about a planned purchase in advance has more time to gather references, line up subcontractors and prepare its team.
6. History of appeals and review rulings
Rulings of the competent review body linked to the authority's procedures, such as the National Appeal Chamber (KIO) in Poland, show how often its tenders end up in dispute and how those disputes are resolved. This is useful context when deciding whether to submit clarification questions and how carefully to prepare your documents.
7. Where and how regularly it awards contracts
The regions where contracts are performed and how often similar contracts recur help you plan ahead. If an authority awards similar contracts every two or three years, the end date of the current contract signals when the next procedure may appear.
How to check the competition at a given authority
Once you know who wins with a contracting authority, the next step is to look at those companies more closely. The supplier profile in Minerva brings together:
- the number of observed bids and wins, plus the win rate,
- the total value of contracts won,
- the contracting authorities where the company bids most often,
- the competitors it meets in procedures,
- its main sectors by CPV code and the regions where it operates,
- its most recent contract awards.
This picture helps you tell whether a competitor specialises in your scope or only appears in the region occasionally. For a deeper look at drawing conclusions from awarded procedures, read our guide on how to analyse competitors' winning bids.
Where to get this data: manually or in a single view
Every piece of information described above can be collected by hand. The table below shows where to look and what the profile in Minerva brings together.
| Information | Where to look manually | What Minerva shows |
|---|---|---|
| Procedure history | National procurement portals, TED, the authority's buyer profile | Past and current procedures in the contracting authority profile |
| Bid prices | Bid opening records of individual procedures | Bid prices and winners in the authority's history |
| Bidders and winners | Contract award notices | Suppliers that bid and win |
| Procurement plans | Procurement plans published by the authority | Procurement plans in the contracting authority profile |
| Appeals | Databases of review body rulings | Linked rulings, number of cases and breakdown of outcomes |
| Competitors | Results of many procedures compiled by hand | Supplier profile: bids, wins, win rate, regions |
How to use the contracting authority profile in Minerva
The contracting authority profile and the supplier profile are available directly from the tender view. In practice it works like this:
- Open a tender from your daily list. Minerva monitors 15,000 sources every day and matches procedures to your company profile based on the full content of the documents, including scanned files read with OCR.
- Click the contracting authority's name. You will see past and current procedures, the CPV structure, regions, procurement plans, bid prices and the suppliers that bid and win.
- Click a supplier's name from the list. The supplier profile shows its win rate, the value of contracts won, its regions and its most frequent competitors.
- Go back to the documents. The AI assistant answers questions about the tender documents with citations that point to the exact place in the source file, so you can verify every answer.
- Record the decision in your process. The tender moves to your team's board, where you assign tasks and deadlines.
What you learn about the authority and the competition is solid input for your go/no-go decision. The decision to bid and the pricing stay with your team.
Checklist before you decide to bid
- Does the authority regularly buy a scope similar to what you offer?
- What range did bid prices fall into in similar procedures?
- Which suppliers bid and win with this authority?
- How many bids does it usually receive?
- Do its procurement plans include further procedures in your scope?
- Have its procedures gone to a review body, and with what outcome?
- Do you meet the selection criteria set out in the tender documents?
- Do you have the resources to deliver the contract on time and in the required region?
Selection criteria and formal requirements are best checked in the full documentation. Our guide on how to analyze tender documents without missing critical requirements will help.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out who wins tenders with a specific contracting authority?
Procurement results are public and appear in contract award notices and in the information on the selection of the most advantageous bid. Done manually, you have to collect them across many procedures. In Minerva, the list of suppliers that bid and win with an authority is available in its profile.
Where can I find bid prices from previous tenders?
Depending on the country and procedure, contracting authorities disclose bid prices in the bid opening record or in the contract award notice. In Minerva, you will find prices from many procedures of a single authority compiled in its tender history within the contracting authority profile.
What is a buyer profile?
A buyer profile is the website or e-procurement platform where a contracting authority publishes notices and tender documents and receives questions and bids. It is where the procedure is run, while the contracting authority profile in Minerva serves to analyse the authority's procurement history.
Does the number of appeals say anything about a contracting authority?
It shows how often its procedures end up in dispute and how those disputes are resolved. Read it together with the number of procedures the authority runs, because large authorities naturally have more cases.
How long does contracting authority research take?
Done manually, it means going through several sources and compiling the results of many procedures. In Minerva, you get the core picture of an authority and its competition by clicking its name in the tender view.
Want to see the contracting authority profile on tenders from your sector? Book a short call and we will show you how it works with your data. If you are interested in the Polish market, you can also check its size without registering in Playground, which is based on Polish public procurement data.
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