Finding public tenders: what SEAO does, and what Offra adds

In Quebec, a public tender starts on SEAO. Public bodies publish their notices there, and that is where you must obtain the documents in order to receive the addenda (see how addenda and deadlines work, in French). Its search is free, and it is excellent on what it holds.

Offra does not replace SEAO. You will keep obtaining your documents there. The real question lies elsewhere: what does SEAO's search leave you to do yourself? Here is what a free Offra account adds to it, and then what a paid plan adds after that.

What SEAO does, and does well

SEAO covers every public body in Quebec. It is the most complete tender source in the country, by far.

Its advanced search also reads inside the documents. Offra cannot do the same: the documents behind a SEAO notice are sold to bidders, and we see only their title, their type and their length. A word buried in a Quebec specification is therefore something to search for on SEAO.

What SEAO does not do is answer for anything but SEAO. And a notice does not tell you whether it is worth your time: not the expected price, not the likely competition, not who holds the contract today.

What a free account adds

The free account needs no card to open, and it does not expire. It is for seeing what is open, and for hearing about it when a new notice matches what you are looking for.

One search, several sources

Open notices from SEAO, CanadaBuys and the municipal portals we follow sit in the same list, with the same search and the same filters. Without Offra, a federal notice or an Ontario municipality's notice is searched for on another site, with another search. Here, it is the same one.

One limit: notices delivered in British Columbia or Alberta come with a paid plan. Each source is described in the tender sources we index.

The same categories everywhere

Each source classifies its notices its own way, and the other sources do not publish SEAO's categories. Offra files every open notice, whatever its source, under one list of ten industries and their trades. Most trades split further into sub-trades: snow removal for buildings and parking lots is not mixed up with public road snow removal. A Quebec notice and an Ontario notice therefore filter the same way.

A notice we could not classify is excluded by an industry filter, and the filter says how many it leaves out.

Filter by what the notice requires

On SEAO notices, the « Requirements » filters are drawn from the notice's own text: bid bond, Revenu Québec attestation, AMP authorisation, RBQ licence, establishment in Quebec, mandatory site visit. They work both ways: tenders without a bid bond are one click away.

This filter answers only for notices whose conditions we have read, and it says how many it leaves out. A notice we have not read is not a notice without a bid bond.

The « Documents » filter keeps the notices that publish a price schedule, drawings, specifications or addenda. It works on the list of published documents, never on their contents.

Search inside federal documents

CanadaBuys publishes its documents openly. Their text is therefore indexed: a word buried in an annex finds its tender. On SEAO notices this is not possible, for the reason given above.

A saved search, and the notices you follow

Save the search you are looking at: new notices that match it arrive by email, daily or weekly, across every source. The free account keeps one saved search.

« Follow » keeps a notice in « Followed ». And « View the original notice » opens the notice on the site that published it: that is where you obtain the documents.

What the free account does not do

Offra reads each portal on its own schedule: SEAO and bids&tenders three times a day, CanadaBuys every two hours. A notice can therefore appear on SEAO a few hours before it reaches Offra.

The free account reads the public notice; it does not judge it. It has no score, no verdict and no bid preparation. That is what a paid plan adds.

What a paid plan adds: the judgement

Anyone can see what is open. A paid plan tells you which of those notices are worth your time, and then helps you answer them.

On every paid plan

Every open notice is scored for your company. On SEAO notices it carries a bid / no-bid verdict, built on five weighted factors: sector fit, expected competition, price position, relationship with the buyer and contract size. The verdict covers SEAO notices only, because SEAO publishes every bidder's amount, losing bids included.

The verdict needs your company to be linked to its history on SEAO. A company that has never bid there does not get one: the feed shows « In your trades » instead, where a notice matches the trades and regions it declared.

The « Relevance » sort puts favourable notices first, then those in your trades and specialties. A notice closing in under three days drops below those that leave you time to prepare a bid. « For my company » keeps only the notices rated favourable or mixed.

Instead of ticking filters, you can also describe what you are looking for in one sentence, with « Describe a search »: « roofing work for schools in Montérégie ». The sentence becomes ordinary filters, which you can see and remove one by one. The « Past » tab opens the award history.

On a notice's page, three tabs are there to dig deeper. « Competitors » shows the firms that keep coming back to this buyer and your past head-to-heads. « Client & references » shows the buyer's record and your contracts closest to this one. « Price » leads with published prices. The analysis starts in one click, with « Analyse this tender », and it is included: it adds your measured odds and the first things to do.

« Submit a bid » then opens the submission. You upload the documents you obtained on SEAO, and you get every requirement with its clause, the compliance matrix, the documents to produce and the key dates. The person who opened the submission gets an email seven days, then two days, before closing. If the closing date is postponed or the tender is cancelled, the « Notice tracking » panel shows it, and the submission's dates follow.

Each plan includes a number of prepared bids, shown on the pricing page. Opening a submission uses nothing: it counts only once you upload documents to start the analysis.

What Business adds

• An advanced feed: filter and sort by score, expected competition and contract value.
• The competition and prices for every buyer, on its record, where the source publishes the bids.
• An AI post-mortem on every bid won or lost.
• In every bid, its public notice found automatically, the gaps in your profile flagged task by task, and your past bids searchable from « Questions ».
• « Generate an answer », which drafts the answer to a writing task and leaves in brackets what only you can supply, such as [PROJECT MANAGER NAME].

The price stays yours: the drafted answer leaves it blank, and an amount that comes neither from the tender documents nor from your own messages is replaced by a blank to fill in. Business also includes more users, more bids and more storage.

Your first submission is on us

Right now, your first submission is on us. It gives every Business feature on that tender, for you and up to ten colleagues, and it is open to companies that have never bid as well. A card is asked for to activate it: verified, never charged. One per card, and one per firm once your firm is claimed.

Each plan's price is on the pricing page.

In short

• SEAO: the official notice, the documents, the addenda, and searching inside a Quebec specification.
• A free Offra account: SEAO, CanadaBuys and municipal portals in one search, the same categories everywhere, filters on requirements, and a saved search.
• A paid plan: which of those notices to go after and why, then preparing the bid.

Further reading

• Find tenders
• Bid or pass
• Pricing
• The tender sources we index
• Bidding on Quebec public tenders from outside Quebec