What is the average number of tenders received for a public contract in the UK?

What is the average number of tenders received for a public contract in the UK?

We often get asked about how competitive an industry is and how many tenders a buyer usually receives in response to their contracts. This blog post provides the answer.


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We often get asked about how competitive an industry is and how many tenders a buyer usually receives in response to their contracts.

The table below shows the average number of tenders received for contracts in the UK in the three years from 2015 to 2017.

The most competitive space seems to be Services related to the oil and gas industry, where the average number of tenders received in response to a contract was 13.3.

At the other end of the scale, Laboratory, optical and precision equipment’s seems to be the least competitive with, on average, only 2.5 tenders received in response to a contract.


If you are interested in a more detailed breakdown for your specific sectors, or in the breakdown for other countries, please get in touch.

For contracts that were divided into lots we use the number of tenders received per lot. We disregarded contracts that were split over different CPV divisions (the two first numbers in the CPV code).