Many SMEs do not take part in public tenders because they cannot find suitable procedures or hear about them too late. Yet publication in Switzerland is largely centralised. The difficulty lies less in access than in selection: anyone scanning hundreds of notices a day overlooks the few that fit.
simap as the central platform
The Confederation, cantons and municipalities publish their tenders on simap.ch, the joint public procurement platform. Open and selective procedures, awards and corrections appear there. Notices can be filtered by CPV codes, standardised classifications of services, and by authority and region. Above the thresholds publication is mandatory; many authorities also publish voluntarily below them.
What does not appear on simap
Contracts in the invitation procedure and the single-tender procedure are not advertised publicly. A considerable share of smaller contracts runs this way. Here you have to be known: through references with the same authority, participation in open procedures and visibility where buyers research.
Contracts in the EU
For contracts above EU thresholds, the Official Journal of the EU with the TED database (Tenders Electronic Daily) is the central source. Swiss suppliers can take part in many EU procedures; evidence of suitability, language and submission channel then follow the rules of the respective member state.
Why keyword searches are not enough
Authorities describe the same service very differently. A contract for a business application is called “software” once, “IT solution” another time, “digitalisation of the permit process” a third, and differently again in French or Italian. CPV codes help but are not always assigned precisely. Searching with a few keywords misses suitable procedures; searching too broadly drowns you in hits.
A process that works
- Sharpen the profile: define which services, contract sizes, regions and authorities are realistic, derived from your own references.
- Search in several languages: use terms in German, French and Italian plus suitable CPV codes.
- Check daily, decide quickly: review new notices within a day and take the bid/no-bid decision early.
- Analyse awards: published awards show who wins on which terms and help calibrate the profile.
- Maintain relationships: be known to the authorities whose contracts fit, for invitation procedures.
Tools
Searching simap can be partly automated with saved queries. Specialised tools go further: Submira, our public tender platform, reports procedures via semantic search profiles even when the authority uses different terms, and extracts knock-out criteria with page references from the documents. All related content is collected in the public procurement topic page.