Bidding window (Bieterfenster)
also: bidding window · preparation time · Bieterfenster
The bidding window is the span between the publication of a contract notice and the expiry of the submission deadline — that is, the time a company actually has to prepare its bid. It is not a legal term but a measured quantity; procurement law works with minimum time limits per procedure type instead. Because those minimums set only a floor, the actual window varies widely between countries, contracting authorities and types of contract.
Median bidding window across 24 measured countries: Germany 33 days (median of 20,544 procedures), Poland 18, the Netherlands 73. The same single market, 4.1 times as much time.
What it means for a bidder
For cross-border bidders the bidding window is the single most important planning figure, because it sets the rhythm: in markets with a short window what matters is how quickly a notice is noticed at all, while in markets with a long window thoroughness decides, since the competition has the same time. The window is shortened further by everything that must happen before submission — platform registration, obtaining certificates, arranging a bond, coordinating with subcontractors.
Two ways of gaining time are overlooked. Where a prior information notice has been published, the authority may and usually will shorten the later submission deadline — so watching prior information notices buys back exactly that time. And where the authority materially changes the procurement documents or answers bidder questions late, it must extend the deadline. A reasoned request for an extension is admissible and is granted more often than it is made.
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DEFINITION · a description of the law with a citation, not legal advice · FIGURE · from nightly-built aggregates of our own corpus · all terms: friedrich-clement.com/en/glossar