A tarsiyah is the decision awarding a competition to a supplier. Once announced, the competition stops being an opportunity and becomes public record — and for the first time in the cycle you can see what buyers actually pay rather than what you assume they pay.
It is the most wasted data source in the Saudi market. Most firms read one award notice — for the competition they just lost — and forget it. The value is not in a single notice; it is in reading many together.
What an award notice carries
- The buying entity and the competition reference.
- The awarded value in riyals.
- The winning party — where it is named.
- The award date and the tender period.
And what it does not
This matters more, because ignoring it is the source of most wrong conclusions:
- No detailed scope. Two contracts at the same value can differ completely in duration and quantity.
- No bidder count. A low value may mean a crowded market — or one competition with no competitor.
- No score breakdown. You cannot tell whether the winner won on technical merit or on price.
- Not always a named winner. A material share of captured records carry no name.
How to use it in pricing
The correct use is narrow and genuinely useful: as a sanity check on your own build-up. Price from cost, margin and risk as usual, then compare against the range this buyer has previously accepted in this sector. If you are far outside it, you have either misread the scope or you are competing for something else — both worth pausing on before you submit.
The wrong use is the reverse: deriving your price from an average of awards. An average pools contracts of different scope and duration, so building on it means pricing against something that was never bought.
From notice to pattern
One notice is news. A hundred is a map: which buyers purchase what you sell, at what typical size, and where spending concentrates. That is what turns awards from post-loss curiosity into an input to the bid/no-bid decision before you buy the booklet.
The aggregate picture of the Saudi market — total awarded value, sector composition and contract-size bands — is published on the government tender market page, with the basis of every figure stated beside it.
What to read next
- Government tenders in Saudi Arabia
- The conditions booklet, and how to read it
- Measuring and raising your win rate
Official sources
- Government Tenders and Procurement Law — the statutory framework for award procedure
- Etimad platform — where competition results are announced
Frequently asked questions
What is a tarsiyah (award)?
The tarsiyah is the decision awarding a competition to a supplier, announced publicly once made. In Saudi practice the announcement is the point at which a competition stops being an opportunity and becomes a matter of public record — which is what makes award data usable at all.
Where can I see the results of a Saudi government tender?
Award announcements are published on the same platform the competition was run on, principally Etimad. They carry the awarded party and value for the specific competition. What no single announcement gives you is the pattern — which buyers award repeatedly, at what typical size, in which sector — and that only appears once many announcements are read together.
Can award data tell me what to price?
It can tell you the range a buyer has previously accepted in a sector, which is genuinely useful context. It cannot tell you what to price, because a value alone omits scope, duration, technical weighting and how many parties bid. Treat it as a sanity check on your own build-up, never as a substitute for it.
Are all Saudi government awards published with a winner named?
No, and this matters. A material share of captured award records carry a value and a buyer but no named winner. Any supplier-side conclusion is therefore drawn from a subset — which is why we publish attribution coverage alongside the figures rather than presenting them as complete.
