What does it cost to participate in a public procurement design competition?

According to research by Belgium's G30 group, an architecture firm invests an average of EUR 23,627 in staff costs per competition. In 70% of cases, architects receive no compensation for their submitted proposal.

How can a small architecture firm find public tenders?

Small firms often lack the capacity to check multiple platforms daily. A monitoring tool like TenderWolf aggregates publications from all European platforms and automatically filters relevant architecture tenders, so you never miss opportunities.

Is a bid compensation mandatory for design competitions in Belgium?

Since 1 February 2024, Belgian contracting authorities must pay a reasonable bid compensation when they request models, drawings or designs as part of a submission. This follows from the SME Act of 22 December 2023.

Why architecture firms use TenderWolf

Architecture is one of the few professions where you work for months without pay, hoping for a commission. No contractor builds a structure at their own expense to prove what they can do. No lawyer prepares an entire case file pro bono as an audition. But architects are expected to do exactly that.

The numbers are sobering.

The cost of competing

The Belgian G30 group — thirty leading architecture firms — investigated what public procurement actually costs them:

19% win rate. More than four out of five submissions lead to nothing.
EUR 23,627 in staff costs per firm, per competition — before you know whether you’ve won.
In 70% of cases, architects receive no compensation at all for their submitted proposal.
Around 10% of competitions are cancelled by the contracting authority after firms have already submitted their proposals.

Do the maths. On average, six firms enter a competition. Together they invest around EUR 142,000 in hours, models and presentations. One firm wins. Five go home empty-handed.

See how TenderWolf helps architecture firms with public procurement — discover the solution for architects.

Systemic abuse

The Network of Architects Flanders (NAV) launched a public “Wall of Shame”: a list of public contracts that systematically exploit architects.

One example: for the KOC Sint-Gregorius masterplan in Gentbrugge — construction budget EUR 18.5 million — a single-stage procedure required a complete preliminary design. Without prior selection. Without any bid compensation.

“This systematically pushes remuneration in our sector downward. We want to put a stop to it once and for all.” — Peter Legroe, NAV

These are not exceptions. They are the norm.

Small firms, big disadvantage

Large firms have bid managers — teams that screen tenders full-time, analyse dossiers and write proposals. For a firm of five to fifteen people, which is the vast majority of the Belgian architecture sector, that is simply not an option.

The result is predictable. Nearly all firms with ten or more employees participate in selection procedures. Among firms of five to ten people, only one in three does. Smaller firms rarely participate — not for lack of talent, but for lack of capacity.

Selection criteria reinforce the problem. “Similar assignments completed in the last three years” sounds reasonable, but the average architecture commission runs four to five years. Young firms and small practices are structurally excluded.

The platform maze

On top of the workload comes a practical problem: where do you find the right tenders?

Across Europe, more than 2,000 procurement platforms exist. A Belgian firm looking to compete in the Netherlands or France needs to monitor at least e-Procurement, TED, TenderNed and BOAMP — each with its own interface, search logic and notification system.

And you still miss things. Restricted procedures without prior publication, regional portals, municipal platforms. It is an opaque landscape, even for experienced firms.

Curious what that looks like in practice? Watch the demo and see how TenderWolf brings all platforms together.

A sector under pressure

The EquiLibre study surveyed more than 1,800 Belgian architects and paints a broader picture. The average Belgian architect earns a net income of EUR 25,454 per year — roughly half that of a lawyer or dentist. One in five is considering leaving the profession. At the same time, 91% are proud of their work and find it intellectually engaging.

The paradox speaks for itself. Architects love what they do, but the conditions make it increasingly hard to sustain. 55% name fair rates for public contracts as a top priority.

The same sentiment is echoed in the Netherlands. BNA policy officer Michel Geertse: “Participation in tenders must be profitable. Otherwise, architecture becomes an expensive hobby.”

What TenderWolf does — and doesn’t do

Let’s be honest: TenderWolf does not solve the structural problems of the sector. Low compensation, unequal access, unpaid design work — those are policy issues that NAV, the Order of Architects and the BNA are rightly fighting for.

What TenderWolf does is simplify the part you can control: finding the right tenders and evaluating whether they are worth your time.

One overview instead of five platforms. TenderWolf aggregates publications from e-Procurement, TED, TenderNed, BOAMP and regional portals. You set up search profiles based on CPV codes, regions, keywords and qualifications, and receive a daily overview of what is relevant to your firm.

Faster evaluation: GO or NO GO? The AI Quickscan extracts the essentials from a tender dossier — selection criteria, award criteria with their weightings, required references, timeline and lots — so you can decide faster whether a tender is worth pursuing. It doesn’t replace your judgement, but it gets the information to you sooner.

See who has worked for a contracting authority before. For each tender, you can see which firms have previously been active for the same client. Useful context for a GO/NO GO decision, as an additional data point alongside your own network and experience.

Compare plans and pricing — view pricing.

Choose better competitions

The win rate in public procurement is 19%. TenderWolf doesn’t change that. What does change: how much time you spend searching, reading and evaluating before you decide to compete. And whether you enter a competition where you stand a chance — or one where you think afterwards: we should have looked more carefully.

Losing fewer competitions starts with choosing better ones.

Start free — full platform, 3,000 credits, no credit card required.

Sources

G30 — Policy Recommendations: Public Procurement (g30.be)
NAV — Wall of Shame: systemic abuse in public procurement (nav.be)
EquiLibre — One in five architects considers quitting — HIVA-KU Leuven / Order of Architects / NAV, 2025 (architectura.be)
BNA — Tender compensation still inadequate (bna.nl)
Tendify — Procurement Portal Fragmentation in Europe (tendify.eu)