On that note, I received this useful info from a valued contributor (thanks!) re. the average number of bids submitted on each contract. This is "to date" in the sense that it's all of the public results posted earlier in this topic, but doesn't include the next couple of jobs that I'm about to post.
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A quick look at bid results for the last 3 years (2024 to date):
---2022 - 279 bidders on 44 jobs = 6.34 per job
2023 - 300 bidders on 48 jobs = 6.25 per job
2024 - 109 bidders on 24 jobs = 4.54 per job
What does this mean? On the surface, when there are fewer bids, the odds of any individual company winning a contract go up. This is pretty obvious. For example, if six companies bid on a job and each submits a random bid with no knowledge of the ground, the odds of a specific company in that group having the lowest bid are 1 in 6 or about 16.7%. If there are only three bidders, then the odds go up to 1 in 3 or 33.3%.
The real-world relationship is more complex, because each company should [hopefully] have some knowledge of the difficulty of the contract, which would influence their bid price and chance of winning the bid. But while there is no longer an equal chance of winning a bid, the relationship between the number of bidders vs the odds of winning a bid is still inversely propotional - fewer bidders, better chances.
However, there is a positive feedback mechanism at work here too, which we can call the invisible hand of the market. When bidders see that there are fewer entities bidding, some of them become less aggressive in their bids. They know the chance of winning is higher, so they don't have to be so competitive. Some will do up a bid and then raise their prices arbitrarily. Others will be more likely to put in a "blind bid" (a bid based upon an office analysis of the contract specs and maps that is not supported by a thorough field reccie). Also, some companies will be more likely to put in a "lottery bid" where they know that their price is not competitive, on the small chance that nobody else bids, or that all other submitted bids are other lottery bids higher than their own.
There have been some contracts already this year where only a single bidder submitted a bid. What happens in this case? Well, the government has to look at the price and decide what to do. Technically, the government can re-tender if they don't believe that the sole bid was a fair market price and if they believe that by re-tendering, they can attract new bids (or a lower bid by the original bidder). This is unfortunate if you look at such a case from the perspective of a planting company, but it's good if you look at this from the prospective of a tax-paying resident of British Columbia (since the government is responsible for the public purse). Of course, the government can also decide that re-tendering the contract might not attract additional bidders, and can even backfire, because if the company that was the sole bidder the first time realizes nobody else was interested, they might RAISE their price on the second go-round. Of course it's important to note that when there's a single bidder on a job, the government won't release the unofficial bid results on that job until they're certain that they're not going to re-tender, because that would send a price signal to the market.
Anyway, the number of people bidding on each project this Fall is decreasing, and this is good for planting companies. It has a bit of a disproportionate indirect inverse multiplier effect, which is good for the industry. Public bids are being won at stronger prices than a year ago, which leads to rippling effects. Even though public work only accounts for roughly 20% of the trees in BC, the public bids act as a barometer for the private sector. Foresters at private mills are taking note of the way that the market is trending.
