What this is for
The Awards and incumbents screen shows who won recently published United Kingdom public contracts, what value the notice stated and, where the notice says so, when the winner's contract ends and the work is likely to be bought again. It helps you choose which public tenders are worth your time and who you will be up against. It covers public contracts only. If your organisation has never bid for a public buyer, the tab is hidden, and the page is still there if you open its link. Private work has no public award notices, so for private buyers you use your own research.
Where to find it
Open Opportunities in the Velstrian Bid menu and choose the Awards and incumbents tab.
Step by step
- Open the Awards and incumbents tab.
- Narrow the list by winning supplier, by the buyer that awarded the contract, or by how recently the notice was published. Buyers from your own bids are offered beside the buyer filter. Choosing one fills the field and nothing is filled for you. Results update as you change a filter.
- Read each record: who won, who awarded it, the stated value, how many bids were received, and when the contract starts and ends.
- Open the award notice to read the original.
- Open What a buyer has done before and type a buyer's name to see how many firms bid, how often small firms won, who holds the work now and when it ends.
Reading the numbers honestly
The screen never invents a figure. If a notice stated no value, it says not published, which means unknown and not zero. If a notice did not say how many bids it received, that does not mean nobody bid. The returns to market date is the buyer's own published end date, not a forecast, and contracts are often extended. The buyer figures are counts of past notices, so they show what happened and not what comes next. A buyer with only a few notices is flagged as a hint rather than a pattern.
Coverage and renewals
You can open a coverage panel to see which publishing portals feed the list. Read results as covering those portals only. An empty result means no matching notice in the covered feeds, not that no contract was awarded. A renewals section may also appear lower down. If it shows a padlock, it is not part of your current plan, and Billing in Settings shows what each plan includes.
If it goes wrong
If the page says award history is not included in your plan, see Billing. If it says the history could not be loaded, choose try again. If a name search finds nothing, check the spelling against the name on the notice.