Where the records come from
Records come from Find a Tender and Contracts Finder. Bidwake keeps each update found in its loaded files, together with the date supplied by the publisher and a link to the notice when a verified link is available.
- Find a Tender
- 98,498 award records available
- Source updates dated: 24 Feb 2025 to 27 Aug 2026
- Contracts Finder
- 228,235 award records available
- Source updates dated: 18 Nov 2016 to 27 Aug 2026
How the records are organised
The government services publish the underlying notices. Bidwake organises them into pages that make related information easier to follow:
- Buyer pages connect name variants when the published identity points to the same organisation.
- Supplier pages group records when identifiers or closely matching names agree.
- Type-of-work pages use the categories published with each award.
- End-date pages use the date from a linked contract when one is available, or the date published with the award when it is not.
Which award records are included?
Only awards whose latest published status is active appear in public counts and totals. Awards marked pending, cancelled, unsuccessful or withdrawn are excluded. If the latest status is blank, the release history must still establish an active award.
What do published values mean?
A notice can publish one value when an award is made and another when the contract is recorded. Bidwake shows the linked contract value on the record while keeping the award value separately for totals. If the two values differ, the record says so. A published value is not necessarily the amount eventually spent.
Totals use award values only when they can be added without duplication. Repeated process values, malformed or non-GBP values, zero or negative amounts, and inconsistent figures are left out. When one award names several suppliers without a published split, Bidwake does not assign the whole value to one supplier.
What checks happen before a record appears?
Each update is checked for valid identifiers, dates, supplier records and unexpected format changes. Bidwake then groups organisations and publishes pages with enough supporting data.
What Bidwake’s records cover
Bidwake works with a defined set of published records. These points explain the scope of the figures and dates shown across the service.
- Find a Tender coverage starts on 24 February 2025, when the current publication format began.
- Contracts Finder coverage uses bulk files from January 2016 through June 2018 and July 2024 through June 2026, followed by live changes. An archive gap remains from August 2018 through June 2024.
- Published end dates can change and do not in themselves announce a new procurement.
- Published values may be missing, revised, shared or describe a framework ceiling.
- Organisation matching can miss a genuine link or join names incorrectly.
- Other public records may exist outside the dates and sources covered here.
Plain-English glossary
- Award
- A published decision to give a contract or part of one to a supplier.
- Buyer
- The public organisation purchasing the goods or services.
- Supplier
- The organisation named as providing the goods or services.
- CPV
- Common Procurement Vocabulary, the categories used to describe public contracts.
- OCDS
- Open Contracting Data Standard, a structured format for publishing contracting information.