How to win public tenders

Start with selection, not with writing the bid

The most common mistake beginners make is submitting bids for everything that roughly fits their industry. In reality, the outcome is primarily determined by which proceedings you choose to enter in the first place. In our database, 67 952 concluded proceedings from the last year have the number of bids listed. The distribution is surprisingly favorable for the observant:

• 23% of proceedings were concluded with only one bid. This means that one in four tenders is won by the person who simply showed up.
• The median is 3 bid(s) — a typical tender is not a battle between a dozen companies.
• Only 49% of proceedings attract four or more bids.

Practical conclusion: instead of fighting in a crowd, it is worth systematically looking for proceedings where the competition is thin. These are usually orders with an unusual subject matter, announced by smaller contracting authorities, or with deadlines falling during holiday periods.

Read the participation requirements before calculating the price

Participation requirements are a filter that rejects a bid before anyone even looks at the price. Check them in this order:

1. References — how many, of what value, and from what period. A requirement for "two services worth 500,000 PLN each in the last three years" excludes more companies than any price could.
2. Financial capacity — turnover, civil liability insurance, and sometimes creditworthiness.
3. Staff — specific qualifications and experience of individuals, often with a requirement to have them available at the bid submission stage.
4. Certificates — ISO and industry-specific. Obtaining them takes months, so either you have them, or you skip that proceeding.

If you do not meet a certain requirement, there are two paths: a consortium or relying on the resources of another entity. Both are legal and common, but they require documents to be submitted along with the bid — they cannot be sent later.

Deadlines are more decisive than price

The deadline for submitting bids is absolute down to the minute, and most proceedings are conducted electronically, where the moment the file is accepted by the platform is what counts. Assume that the final hours before the deadline are the worst possible time to submit: platforms can be overloaded, and a qualified electronic signature can sometimes cause surprises.

The second deadline that is often forgotten is the deadline for asking questions. This is the cheapest tool you have. Asking about an unclear provision or a requirement tailored to a specific contractor often results in a change to the specifications — and a change to the specifications means a change in the balance of power.

Bid bond

A bid bond is required in 28% of active national proceedings in our database. The most common pitfalls are submitting it after the deadline, in the wrong form, or providing a bank guarantee with clauses that do not allow the contracting authority to execute it unconditionally. It is always worth reading a guarantee sentence by sentence — it is a document that causes bids to be rejected without further consideration.

What to do after losing

The information regarding the selection of the most advantageous bid includes the scoring of all participants. This is the best training material available: you can see by how much you lost and why. If you lost by less than a few percent, usually a correction to one element of your calculation is enough to come out on top next time.

However, if you suspect that a bid inconsistent with the specifications was selected or that the requirements were set for a single contractor, you have the right to appeal to the National Appeals Chamber (KIO). The deadlines are short — counted in days from the notification — so the decision must be made immediately.