Québec Public Procurement: 1% of Winning Suppliers Take 28% of SEAO Contracts

Adjudica analysis, 2026-06-05, SEAO open data, bids and awards from 2022 to 2025.

On Québec's public tenders, a small share of suppliers comes back far more often than the rest. Reading the SEAO open data through the lens of tenderers, more than 432,000 bids from 2022 to 2025, one fact stands out: among the businesses that have won at least one contract, the top 1% of most frequent winners takes 28% of awarded contracts. In value, the gap is sharper still.

TL;DR in 30 seconds

• The top 1% of winning suppliers (451 firms) takes 28% of contracts published on SEAO, and roughly 29% of their value.
• In dollars, the top 1% of suppliers by value captures 60% of the dollars awarded, out of a total of about $213 billion from 2022 to 2025.
• A majority of bidders still win at least once: of 54,300 businesses that bid, more than 45,000 landed at least one contract.
• At the other end, 144 businesses bid 20 times or more while winning 10% or less.
• This concentration is not, in itself, a sign of irregularity. But it does invite an SME to choose its calls for tenders more carefully.

Who this article is for For Québec SMEs that respond to public calls for tenders and want to understand what the ground really looks like before investing hours in a bid.

Contents

1. The finding: a concentration of wins
2. The other end of the spectrum
3. Observations that coexist with this concentration
4. Not every sector looks alike
5. What it changes for your SME
6. How to read these numbers (method and limits)

1. The finding: a concentration of wins

We looked not at who buys, but at who bids: for each call for tenders, the businesses that submitted an offer, and those that won the contract. Names were normalized to group together spelling variants.

Among the businesses that won at least one contract from 2022 to 2025, the 451 most frequent winners, or 1% of the winners, take 28% of awarded contracts and roughly 29% of their value. It's not that few businesses win: of the 54,300 that bid, more than 45,000 landed at least one contract. The imbalance is in the frequency of wins.

Seen through the lens of amounts, it's more pronounced still: the top 1% of suppliers by value captures 60% of the dollars awarded, out of a total of about $213 billion from 2022 to 2025.

2. The other end of the spectrum

At the opposite end, 144 businesses submitted 20 bids or more from 2022 to 2025 while reaching a success rate of 10% or less. Some won no contract at all among the awards published on SEAO that we analyzed.

That isn't proof of overall commercial failure: these businesses may have other revenue, or target highly contested markets. But it is an opportunity-cost signal. Preparing a compliant bid takes time. Repeating it on calls for tenders where the observed probability of winning is low means investing hours where the return is thin.

3. Observations that coexist with this concentration

Two findings already measured help read this picture, without establishing its cause. First, nearly 6 public tenders in 10 are awarded without a call for tenders: 58.3% of contracts published on SEAO between 2021 and 2023 were awarded without a call for tenders. Second, 31% of the calls for tenders that were actually open attract only a single tenderer (2021-2024).

These figures demonstrate neither collusion, nor favoritism, nor irregularity. They are a reminder that the intensity of competition varies widely by award method, sector and region.

4. Not every sector looks alike

Concentration isn't the same everywhere. In our data, civil engineering appears clearly more fragmented than other segments: there, the five largest winners take only 9% of the lots. At the other extreme, some categories are dominated by a small number of specialized suppliers.

For a business, that guarantees nothing on a specific lot. But it does indicate that an analysis by sub-sector, region and contract size can reveal markets far more accessible than the average would suggest.

5. What it changes for your SME

The lesson isn't to give up on public tenders. It's to choose your files with method rather than on instinct. Before you bid, it pays to look at:

And if you bid often without winning, don't conclude that price is the only factor at play. The compliance of your file, references, capacity and reading of the specifications count too. The choice of which calls for tenders to pursue deserves auditing just as much as your price does.

6. How to read these numbers (method and limits)

Adjudica analysis of SEAO open data (OCDS-inspired format), covering bids and awards from 2022 to 2025: more than 432,000 bids, company names normalized to group together variants.

Article updated on July 22, 2026. Two methodology adjustments changed some figures: de-duplication of SEAO corpus exports (which lowers some totals) and the reclassification of mandated purchases as tenders rather than sole-source contracts. The figure-by-figure detail is in our methodology note.

Three important clarifications:

• The figures cover contracts published on SEAO (above the publication thresholds), not the whole of Québec's public purchasing. Purchases below the thresholds, often more accessible to small local businesses, don't appear here.
• The "28%" is a share of the number of contracts; the share by value is stated separately.
• The normalization of names may group together related spellings or, conversely, leave certain related entities separate. Periods are dated by indicator (concentration from 2022 to 2025; 58.3% over 2021-2023; 31% over 2021-2024). The figures describe the observed history; they don't predict the outcome of any future call for tenders.

Sources

• Adjudica analysis: bids and awards from 2022 to 2025, company names normalized.
• Context: Adjudica analyses of contracts by mutual agreement (58.3%, 2021-2023) and single-tenderer calls for tenders (31%, 2021-2024).

Going further

Find all of Adjudica's public-tenders analyses and data.