RECOMPETE RADAR
Government contract recompete tracking that starts months before the RFP
Every awarded contract has an end date, and most of the work gets tendered again. The radar reads award dates and contract periods across the tender corpus, computes when agreements expire, names the incumbent, and filters by horizons from 6 to 24 months. Benchmarks built from real bid tables tell you what winning usually takes.
The most predictable deal in government contracting
A recompete is a contract coming back to market. Government work is awarded for a period: 12 months, 36 months, sometimes longer. When the period ends, the work usually does not: it gets tendered again. The buyer is known, the scope is known, the incumbent is known, and the approximate date is arithmetic. No other deal in your pipeline announces itself years in advance.
Yet most bid teams meet a recompete the day the RFP is published, which is months too late. By then the buyer has written requirements shaped by whoever was in the room, the strongest local partners are committed, and the incumbent has had the entire contract period to build the relationship. Teams that win recompetes treat the contract end date, not the RFP date, as the start of pursuit: meet the buyer while the requirements are still soft, choose teaming early, and price with the category's history in hand. The recompete timing lesson walks the full playbook.
Government contract recompete tracking is the job the radar automates: finding those end dates before they matter, at market scale.
How the radar works
Award date plus contract period equals your head start.
No prediction models. The radar is built from what portals actually publish, and it says so when they do not.
1 · Compute the end date
Where a portal publishes an award date and a contract period, the radar computes when the agreement expires. A contract awarded in March 2024 for 36 months ends in March 2027, and the radar has known since the day it was awarded.
2 · Name the incumbent
Every row carries the supplier holding the contract and the awarded value. One click opens the incumbent's dossier: its other wins, its buyers, and who it teams with, from the tender intelligence plane.
3 · Pick your horizon
Filter to contracts expiring in the next 6, 12, 18, or 24 months, by buyer, sector, or value. A 24-month view is your business-development plan. A 6-month view is your capture list for this quarter.
What winning takes
Benchmarks from real bid tables, with honest sample sizes.
Knowing a contract is coming back is half the job. The other half is knowing what winning it usually takes, and that comes from bid tables: the published record of who bid what. Where portals publish them, Ishara turns that history into category benchmarks.
- Bidder-count histograms: does this category draw 3 bidders or 12?
- Winner-versus-median spread: how far below the pack do winning bids land?
- Award-value percentiles, so you know where your price would have sat historically
- Every statistic states its sample size. A number built from 7 tenders says it was built from 7 tenders.
Follow the money
Budget lines, with coverage stated per state.
Before a tender exists, there is often a budget line. Where governments publish them, Ishara carries budget lines alongside the tender corpus, so you can see what has been allocated before anyone asks for bids. Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and the UAE each publish very different things here, so every state's view carries a coverage note saying exactly what is available and what is not.
- Allocations visible ahead of the tenders they fund
- A per-state coverage note instead of an implied promise
- Market-by-market detail on the coverage pages
A worked example
From end date to head start
A facilities contract is awarded in March 2024 with a 36-month period. The radar computes the end date, March 2027, the day the award is published. On an 18-month horizon, the contract surfaces in September 2025, with the incumbent and the awarded value on the row. Suppose the category's benchmarks (illustrative numbers) show a median of 6 bidders and winners landing about 8% below the median bid, from a stated sample of 40 tenders. You now have 18 months to meet the buyer, a named incumbent to study through its dossier, a teaming decision you can make before the strong partners are taken, and a pricing corridor instead of a guess. When the RFP lands in early 2027, you are editing a bid, not starting one.
Multiply that by every expiring contract in your sectors and the radar becomes a pipeline source, not a report. The bid pipeline lesson covers how to stage it, and the bid pipeline calculator puts numbers on how many pursuits your win rate needs.
What the radar will not pretend to know
Government contract recompete tracking is only as good as the published record, so the boundaries are stated plainly. End dates exist where portals publish an award date and a contract period. Benchmarks exist only where portals publish bid tables: Qatar today, refreshed daily, with Bahrain next. There is no guarantee a contract will be rebid rather than extended, which is exactly why the radar gives you months to find out from the buyer directly instead of from the RFP.
If pursuit is your job, the bid-team view shows how radar, benchmarks, and pipeline fit together, or open the app and set a 12-month horizon on your sector.
Frequently asked questions
What is a recompete?
A contract coming back to market. Government work is awarded for a fixed period, and when the period ends the work is usually tendered again. Because the buyer, scope, incumbent, and approximate date are all knowable in advance, a recompete is the most predictable deal in government contracting, and the teams that win them start pursuit from the contract end date, not the RFP date.
How does the radar know when a contract ends?
Arithmetic on the published record: where a portal publishes an award date and a contract period, the radar computes the end date and counts down to it. Rows carry the incumbent supplier and awarded value, and you filter by horizons from 6 to 24 months, by buyer, sector, or value. Where a portal does not publish the period, no end date is invented.
Where do the bid benchmarks come from?
From real bid tables, the published record of who bid what on past tenders. Ishara computes bidder-count histograms, winner-versus-median spread, and award-value percentiles per category, and every statistic states the sample size it was computed from. Benchmarks exist only where portals publish bid tables: Qatar today, with Bahrain next as its coverage lands.
Can a recompete feed my pipeline?
Yes. Any contract on the radar links back to its award in the tender corpus, where one click opens the buyer and incumbent dossiers and tracks the pursuit into your CRM. From there it runs like any deal: a staged bid pipeline, tasks, email on the record, and automations. A 24-month horizon view is effectively your business-development plan, pre-sorted by deadline.
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