Vlada Gavriliuc

I think it’s a mix. Small teams probably shouldn’t plan their whole capacity around one tender, but tracking recurring buyers and past timelines can make the delays a lot more predictable. The key is treating tenders as part of the pipeline, not the entire pipeline.

I think it depends a lot on where you're bidding, but I'd probably use a mix rather than rely on one source. For Europe, TED is the obvious starting point for official notices. SAM.gov is essential if you're looking at US federal contracts. Contracts Finder is useful for UK opportunities, and Tenderwell is interesting if you want one place to search across multiple markets instead of checking each procurement portal separately. There are also bigger commercial databases like GovWin for teams that need deeper US market intelligence. The main thing I'd look for isn't just "how many tenders does this tool have?" but how good the filtering is. If I'm still opening 50 irrelevant PDFs to find 3 opportunities, the aggregation hasn't really solved the problem.

Not as often as people might think. When contracts expire, Spanish hospitals generally re-tender them, but they don't automatically switch suppliers. If the current supplier has delivered reliable service and remains competitive on price and quality, it's common for them to retain the contract. Award decisions usually consider technical quality, delivery performance, warranties, and lifecycle value alongside cost, rather than price alone.