Every specification you read makes you better. But most tender teams only read the specifications for the contract they are bidding on — and start from scratch every time. That's like taking an exam without looking at previous years' questions.

The power of historical specifications is structurally underestimated. Those who systematically analyze previous specifications write faster, price more competitively, and make better GO/NO-GO decisions. This article explains how.

Why historical specifications are worth their weight in gold

Contracting authorities repeat themselves

Government agencies do not write every specification from scratch. They reuse templates, copy clauses, and use fixed patterns. A municipality that wrote a specification for green maintenance three years ago will use largely the same structure, the same selection criteria, and similar award criteria in the next cycle.

This offers a huge advantage to anyone who has read the previous version. Before you start writing, you already know what requirements will be imposed, how the weighting will be calculated, and which documents you need to prepare. While your competitors are opening the specifications for the first time and figuring everything out, you are already working on your plan of action.

Pricing becomes predictable

One of the most difficult parts of a tender is pricing. Set the price too high and you lose out on price. Set it too low and you sacrifice margin — or worse, you arouse suspicion in the evaluator.

Historical specifications provide you with two crucial data points. First, the contracting authority's estimate, which is sometimes explicitly stated in the specifications or can be deduced from the chosen procedure (below or above the European threshold). Second, the award amounts of previous, comparable contracts, which you can use to triangulate the market price.

An IT company bidding on a software project for a provincial government can use previous specifications from that same government to find out what daily rates were customary, how many hours were typically estimated, and whether there was room for change requests. With that knowledge, you don't price blindly — you price informed.

Selection criteria are no longer a surprise

Each set of specifications contains selection criteria: the minimum requirements you must meet in order to be eligible. These include turnover requirements, references, certifications, and staffing capacity.

By analyzing the specifications of the past two to three years for a specific contracting authority or sector, you can identify patterns. Does this contracting authority always require ISO 9001? Does it require three references of at least the same size? Does it apply a minimum turnover threshold of 1.5 times the contract value?

That knowledge determines your GO/NO-GO decision. If you know that a client structurally requires VCA** and you only have VCA*, you can either address that requirement — or decide not to tender and spend your time on more promising assignments.

Four specific applications

1. Identifying the contracting authority

Every contracting authority has its own style. Some write strict specifications with little room for interpretation. Others deliberately allow freedom in the elaboration and reward creativity in the plan of action. Still others focus strongly on price and use the quality assessment primarily as a minimum threshold.

By reading three to five previous specifications from the same contracting authority, you will obtain a profile:

How does this contracting authority weigh price versus quality? For some contracting authorities, the ratio is consistently 40/60, while for others it is 60/40. If you know this in advance, you can tailor your strategy accordingly even before the new specifications are published.

What language and structure does the contracting authority expect? Some departments want a tightly structured plan of action with a fixed chapter layout. Others prefer a narrative approach. The previous specifications tell you exactly which format works best.

How strict is the contracting authority in its assessment? You can deduce how rigid the contracting authority is from the answers in the information memorandum for previous contracts. Are questions answered flexibly? Are requirements adjusted after objections? Or does the service rigidly adhere to the original wording?

2. Strengthen your quotation templates

Experienced tender teams work with templates: standard texts for project organization, quality assurance, risk management, and communication. The difference between a mediocre and an excellent template lies in the extent to which it is tailored to what contracting authorities actually ask for.

By analyzing dozens of specifications, you can discover which themes recur structurally in your sector. In the construction sector, these are safety, planning, environmental nuisance, and sustainability. In ICT, they are project methodology, information security, change management, and SLAs.

With that knowledge, you can build a library of answers that you can refine for each quote—instead of reinventing the wheel every time. Not only does that save time, it also improves quality: your answers get better and better because they are based on what is actually being asked.

3. Building market intelligence

Specifications contain more information than most bidders realize. You can deduce the direction a contracting authority is taking from the specifications. Are they suddenly asking for cloud-native architecture when previous contracts were on-premise? Then a digitization strategy is underway. Are there new requirements for CO₂ reporting? Then the contracting authority is preparing for the sustainability requirements that will come into effect in Europe in 2026-2027.

Identifying these trends gives you a strategic advantage. You can invest in certifications and skills that you know will be in demand in a year's time. You can build partnerships with parties that have complementary expertise. And you can adjust your positioning to reflect emerging themes.

4. Assessing the competition

In public tenders, the award decisions are published: who won, for what amount, and with what score. By combining this information with the specifications and information notes, you can build up a picture of your competitive field.

Which companies regularly submit bids to the same contracting authorities as you? What are their price levels? On which criteria do they score well or poorly? After a year of systematic tracking, you will have a competition dossier that no sales pitch can match — because it is based on actual award data.

Where can you find historical cutlery?

Specifications are in principle public documents, but they are not always easy to find. The most important sources are:

e-Procurement (Belgium). The central platform for Belgian public procurement. Specifications for active contracts can be downloaded after registration. However, documents are not always retained or kept accessible after the procedure has been completed.

TED (European). Tenders Electronic Daily publishes announcements and award notices for contracts above the European threshold. The specifications themselves are not included — for these, you need to go to the national platform.

Your own archive. The most valuable source is your own archive. Every specification you have ever downloaded, every information note you have read, every award decision you have received—keep it systematically. After two years, you will have a dataset that is more valuable than any external source.

TenderWolf. TenderWolf is building a searchable database of specifications that makes historical specifications and related documents searchable. You can search by keywords, CPV codes, contracting authority, and time period. This allows you to find similar contracts in seconds that you would never be able to find manually.

Practical: setting up a system

Analyzing historical specifications only really pays off if you do it systematically. A simple but effective system:

Step 1: Define your scope. Select the three to five contracting authorities that are most relevant to your business, plus the two to three CPV categories that cover your core business. Don't start too broadly.

Step 2: Collect. Download the specifications, information notes, and award decisions from the past two to three years for your selected scope. Save them in a structured folder structure by contracting authority and by year.

Step 3: Analyze the patterns. For each contracting authority, examine the selection and award criteria, the weighting of price versus quality, the references and certifications requested, and the price level of the awards. Note any recurring patterns.

Step 4: Build your knowledge maps. Create a summary profile for each contracting authority: their standard requirements, their style, their price level, their assessment behavior. This will become your "cheat sheet" for each new assignment from that service.

Step 5: Keep track and update. Add every new specification and award decision to your archive. Trends change — contracting authorities adjust their requirements, price levels shift, new themes emerge. Your knowledge maps are only valuable if they are up to date.

The difference in practice

The difference between a tender team that analyzes historical specifications and one that does not is comparable to the difference between a student who practices old exams and one who only reads the textbook. Both are prepared, but one knows exactly what to expect.

More concrete quotes, more competitive prices, faster decisions, and less time wasted on hopeless bids. It's not a spectacular innovation—it's discipline. And it works.

Getting started with TenderWolf

With the TenderWolf specification database, you can search historical specifications by keyword, sector, and contracting authority. Combine this with the AI quick scan for rapid content analysis and market insights for competitive information.

Get started with TenderWolf for free and build your knowledge advantage.

Analyzing specifications like a pro: how to use historical data