Building Contracts in Québec: How Close Public Tenders Actually Are

Martin runs a 40-employee construction firm in the Lanaudière region. He has been bidding on public tenders for six years, files about thirty a year, and wins a few. What he does not know, and what no one has ever told him, is by how much he misses the ones he loses.

We looked at 32,719 building contracts awarded in Québec between 2021 and 2025. Here is what real competition looks like in this sector.

The scope, first

Across all building contracts in Québec's public sector, 69% go through a call for tenders. The rest are awarded by mutual agreement, with no competition. That is a high proportion compared with other sectors: in computer hardware, the competitive share falls to 27%.

In other words, building is a sector where bidding is worth the effort. The figures below cover that competitive share.

When two prices are published, one in three is decided under 5%

This is the figure that should change how you prepare a price.

When a building tender receives at least two priced bids, the median gap between the two lowest is 9.1%. And in 33.9% of cases, that gap is under 5%.

One in three of those tenders, then, is decided in a band where a few percentage points on your estimate make the difference between winning and walking away empty-handed. As an illustration, and without this amount coming from our data: on a hypothetical $800,000 contract, 5% is $40,000. That is often less than the margin you added out of caution.

A clarification on the first row: this is the gap between the two lowest amounts filed, not the gap between the winning firm and the one behind it. The two coincide in the large majority of building contracts, which are awarded to the lowest compliant bidder, but not in all of them. We publish what we measure.

You are not alone, but you are not thirty either

A building tender receives on average 3.5 bids, with a median of 3. That is neither a crowd nor a desert.

More interesting: 18.7% of building tenders receive a single bid. Nearly one in five. Those contracts exist, they are put out to competition, and no one other than the winning bidder showed up. Spotting them before the filing deadline is often worth more than sharpening your price on a file where seven competitors are expected.

A market no one holds

Here is the measure that really separates a sector you can enter from one that is locked: how many different firms do you have to add up to cover half the contracts awarded by tender?

In building, the answer is 406. The sector's top winner holds only 0.6% of contracts awarded by tender.

For comparison: in computer hardware, 30 firms are enough. Building awards by tender are therefore the 2nd least concentrated of the eight sectors we measured. Only maintenance and repair is less concentrated, with 662.

An honest caveat on that figure: company names on SEAO are not standardized, and the same firm can appear there under several spellings. Real concentration is therefore at least as strong as what we measure, never weaker. The 406 is an upper bound.

What this changes for your next bid

Three conclusions, in the order they are useful.

Your price is probably closer than you think. With a median gap of 9.1% and one in three of those tenders decided under 5%, most losing bids in building do not lose by much. If you lose regularly, the adjustment to find is often counted in points, not in tens of percent.

Choosing the file matters as much as the price. Between a notice that will draw eight bidders and one that will draw a single bid, the preparation effort is the same and the odds are not. Pick your battles before you pick your margin.

The sector is not closed to you. No handful of firms wins the tenders of Québec's public building sector. If you are not winning, it is not a question of barriers to entry.

Method

These figures are measured from the open data of Québec's electronic tendering system (SEAO), covering contracts awarded between 2021 and 2025. A contract is counted once, whatever the number of lots or amendments.

The share put out to competition covers public calls for tenders, calls for tenders by invitation, which are addressed only to the firms that were solicited, and purchases made through a mandated body or a group of organisations.

The price gap is measured on tenders that received at least two published total amounts. They represent 98.6% of the sector's tenders that received at least two bids. Unit prices, which are not comparable with one another, are excluded. SEAO does not publish the evaluation method used: our measure therefore describes how dense price competition is, without distinguishing an award to the lowest price from a quality-price grid.

Sources

Further reading

Find all of Adjudica's analyses and data on public procurement.