About

Who we are

We trade as Holdfast. Here is what we do, where our data comes from, how we treat it and how to reach a person.

What Holdfast does

  • Shows the public contracts in your trade and area, who holds each one now and when it is likely to come back to tender (dates we work out are marked as estimates).
  • Emails you new tenders and re-tender windows that match your trades and area, so you hear early.
  • Helps you bid: plain-English tender summaries, bid drafts that a person at your firm checks and signs, and a price check.

100 trades, from contract cleaning, security and waste to grounds and building maintenance. More in the help centre.

Where the data comes from

From public award and tender notices, as the buyers published them. Today the scan reads TED, the EU's tender database, for Ireland and Malta, four times a day. Sources for other countries are built but switched off: Find a Tender for the UK, CanadaBuys for Canada, USAspending for the US, AusTender for Australia and GETS for New Zealand; each is switched on only after it has been checked.

We don't read Ireland's eTenders portal yet, so a notice published only there (a smaller contract, below the EU thresholds) is not in Holdfast. Contracts above the thresholds must also be published on TED, which is where we read them. eTenders alerts and Holdfast compared.

Contract values are the ceilings buyers published, not amounts paid. Where no contract term was published, the end date uses the usual term for the trade and is marked as an estimate. How dates are worked out.

How holders' names are protected

The firms that hold contracts are named in public award notices. Even so, our public pages never name them: for each contract they show the buyer, the contract and the month its re-tender window opens. The current holder, the value and the exact dates are for members: firms on the 30-day free trial or a paid plan, once signed in. The one exception is the Free Contracts Report a firm asks for by email: it lists that firm's own contracts and up to 5 contracts coming back in its trade with their current holders, and we limit how many reports one email address or connection can ask for.

Members' own data (profile, evidence, bids, prices) is never shown to another customer. Our privacy page.

How to opt out

If we emailed your firm and you'd rather we didn't, reply "no thanks" (or "remove me"), or write to support@holdfastcontracts.com. A person puts your email address and firm name on our do-not-contact list, and we don't email you again. Every alert email has a one-click link to turn alerts off. To see, correct or delete your data, write to the same address. Where did we get your firm's details?