Hilma: Finnish Public Tenders, RFPs and Contract Notices – How to Find the Right Ones

Hilma is Finland's official free electronic notice channel for public procurement. Statutory responsibility for the service lies with the State Treasury (Valtiokonttori) since 1 January 2025 — previously the Ministry of Finance — and Hansel Oy runs the technical platform at hankintailmoitukset.fi. Every contracting authority in Finland — municipalities, government agencies, universities, public utilities — is required to publish procurement notices on Hilma when the estimated value exceeds the applicable threshold.

The legal basis for Hilma is Section 60 of the Finnish Public Procurement Act (hankintalaki, 1397/2016). This section requires that contract notices for national and EU-threshold procurements are published electronically on Hilma before or simultaneously with any other publication. For EU-threshold procurements, Hilma forwards the notice to TED (Tenders Electronic Daily), the EU's procurement notice portal, ensuring cross-border visibility.

Hilma serves both contracting authorities and suppliers. For contracting authorities, it is the legally mandated publication channel. For suppliers, it is the primary discovery tool for Finnish public procurement opportunities. The platform is available in Finnish, Swedish, and partially in English, reflecting Finland's official languages and the requirements of EU procurement directives.

Understanding Hilma's role is essential for any company that wants to participate in Finnish public procurement. It is the starting point for finding opportunities, but it is not the only tool a supplier needs. Hilma publishes the notice — what follows next involves other systems and platforms, which we cover in the sections below.

Hilma has been in operation since 2011 in its current form and was significantly updated in 2019 to align with EU eForms standards. The platform processes thousands of notices annually, covering everything from small municipal service contracts to major national infrastructure projects worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Hundreds of tenders are open on Hilma at any given time, and new contract notices are published every business day. Whenever you search Hilma for tenders or RFPs you see the same basic view: the newest notices in publication order and an advanced search you can narrow by keyword, CPV code, region and notice type. The problem is not a lack of notices but their volume – and the fact that the ones that fit your company are easily buried among hundreds of others, almost all of them written in Finnish.

When you find an interesting open tender, check four things first: the submission deadline, the estimated contract value, the suitability requirements (turnover, references, certificates) and the procurement procedure. On that basis you can make a bid/no-bid decision in minutes and spend time only on competitions where your company has a realistic chance. In national procurements the tender period can be as short as 14 days, so you want to know about a notice on the day it is published.

Manual keyword search and Hilma's own alert function miss tenders for three reasons. First, contracting authorities describe the same thing in different words: cleaning services appear as 'puhtauspalvelu' in one notice and as part of facility management in another, and software development can hide inside a 'digitalisation project'. Second, CPV codes are applied to notices with varying precision. Third, Hilma only covers above-threshold procurements – small procurements and many framework call-offs are published elsewhere. Alerts also never assess whether a tender actually fits your company; they only report a keyword hit.

Haavi turns this around. You describe your company's capabilities and goals once, and the AI compares every new notice against that profile – from Hilma, the EU's TED portal, small-procurement channels and contracting authorities' own systems, more than 60,000 procurements a week in total. Matching tenders surface on publication day, and Haavi's RFP analysis condenses the requirements, award criteria and deadlines so the bid/no-bid decision is quick. No keyword tuning, no daily visits to Hilma – and no Finnish required to spot the opportunity.

Hilma publishes several distinct types of procurement notices, each serving a different purpose in the procurement lifecycle. Understanding these types helps suppliers know what action to take — and when.

The contract notice (hankintailmoitus) is the most important notice type for suppliers. It announces a specific procurement that is open for tenders. The contract notice includes the subject of the procurement, eligibility requirements, evaluation criteria, tender submission deadline, and a link to the e-procurement platform where documents are available. When you see a contract notice, the clock is ticking: you have a limited period to prepare and submit your tender.

A prior information notice (ennakkoilmoitus) signals an upcoming procurement before the formal contract notice is published. Contracting authorities use prior information notices to alert the market, often months in advance. For suppliers, these are valuable planning signals. A prior information notice can also reduce the minimum tender period in subsequent EU-threshold procurements from 30 days to 15 days, so contracting authorities have an incentive to publish them. Monitoring prior information notices gives suppliers more preparation time.

The contract award notice (jälki-ilmoitus) is published after a procurement has been completed and a contract has been awarded. It reveals who won, the contract value, and the number of tenders received. For suppliers, contract award notices are a competitive intelligence tool. They show which companies are winning in your sector, at what price points, and how competitive specific markets are. Studying contract award notices helps you calibrate your pricing and understand the competitive landscape.

A voluntary transparency notice (vapaaehtoinen avoimuusilmoitus) is published when a contracting authority has made a direct award without a competitive process and wants to provide transparency. This happens, for example, when a contracting authority believes the procurement is exempt from competitive tendering. Publishing a voluntary transparency notice starts a 14-day standstill period, during which competitors can challenge the direct award. If you believe a direct award was unjustified and you could have supplied the goods or services, this notice gives you the window to act.

A corrigendum (korjausilmoitus) corrects or amends a previously published notice. Contracting authorities publish corrigenda when they need to change deadlines, fix errors in the original notice, modify requirements, or clarify questions raised by potential bidders. Always check for corrigenda on procurements you are tracking — a missed corrigendum could mean your tender is based on outdated information or you miss an extended deadline.

In addition to these main types, Hilma also handles design contest notices, concession notices, and notices related to defence and security procurements under the PUTU Act. The platform categorizes all notices using CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) codes, which allows suppliers to search by industry and product category.

Hilma's search lets you look for notices with free-text search across titles and descriptions and narrow results by CPV code, contract value, region, notice type and publication date. Notices are written in Finnish (sometimes Swedish), so English keywords rarely return results – you need Finnish terms such as 'IT-konsultointi' or 'rakennusurakka'. CPV codes (Common Procurement Vocabulary) are the most precise filter: for example 72000000 covers IT services, 45000000 construction works and 85000000 health services. The classification is eight digits and hierarchical, so a parent code returns more, a child code less – software development sits under 72200000, while 72000000 covers the whole IT sector.

A typical contract notice contains a description of the subject matter, the estimated value, the submission deadline, the suitability requirements, the award criteria with their weightings and a link to the procurement documents. Of these, the suitability requirements decide whether you can take part at all, and the weighting of award criteria tells you whether the competition is on price or on quality. Failing to meet a suitability requirement leads to exclusion from the competition.

Hilma's alert function sends an email when new notices match your saved criteria. It is a fair basic alert, but it has three limitations: it only works on exact criteria, so notices written with different wording are missed; it only covers notices published on Hilma; and it never assesses whether the tender fits your company. Criteria that are too narrow lose opportunities, criteria that are too broad flood your inbox – and tuning them is left to you.

In practice, monitoring based on keywords and alerts easily costs a supplier several hours a week once small-procurement channels and other sources are added on top of Hilma. In Haavi the monitoring is set up once: you describe your company's capabilities and the AI does the comparison against every new notice. That way you also find the tenders where the contracting authority uses different terms than you do, and you are not dependent on one channel or one keyword.

A common point of confusion for new suppliers is the relationship between Hilma and the actual procurement process. Hilma publishes the notice — the announcement that a procurement exists. But the procurement documents, tender submission, and communication with the contracting authority happen through a separate e-procurement platform. Hilma is the notice board; the work happens elsewhere.

When you click on a contract notice in Hilma, you will find a link to the e-procurement platform where the full procurement documents are available. In Finland, the most common platforms are Cloudia Kilpailutus (used by many municipalities and government agencies), Tarjouspalvelu.fi (a widely used tender portal), Hanki-palvelu (used by some state entities), and Mercell (used internationally). The contracting authority chooses which platform to use, and different authorities may use different platforms.

To access the procurement documents, you typically need to register on the relevant e-procurement platform and log in. Registration is usually free for suppliers. Once logged in, you can download the full request for proposals (RFP), technical specifications, draft contract terms, ESPD requirements, pricing templates, and any attachments. These documents contain the detailed information you need to prepare your tender — the Hilma notice alone is never sufficient.

Tender submission also happens through the e-procurement platform, not through Hilma. You prepare your tender according to the requirements, upload it to the platform, and submit it before the deadline. The platform timestamps your submission. Late submissions are automatically rejected — there are no exceptions in public procurement. Always submit well before the deadline to avoid technical issues.

Questions and clarifications during the tender period are also handled through the e-procurement platform. If you have questions about the procurement documents, you submit them through the platform's messaging function. The contracting authority publishes answers to all bidders simultaneously, maintaining equal treatment. Questions and answers become part of the procurement record.

This multi-platform workflow means that a supplier participating in Finnish public procurement needs to be registered on several systems: Hilma for monitoring notices, and at least one or two e-procurement platforms for accessing documents and submitting tenders. Managing accounts across these platforms is part of the operational reality of public procurement in Finland.

For EU-threshold procurements, the contracting authority must provide full electronic access to the procurement documents from the date the notice is published on Hilma. This means you should be able to download documents immediately. If the link in the Hilma notice does not work or the documents are not available, contact the contracting authority — this may be an error that needs correction. Haavi's RFP analysis does the same screening for you: it extracts the suitability requirements, award criteria and deadlines from the documents into one view so that the bid/no-bid decision takes minutes.

Hilma is the primary and legally mandated notice channel, but it does not capture every public purchasing event in Finland. Understanding what appears on Hilma and what does not helps suppliers build a complete picture of the market.

Procurements below the national threshold are not required to be published on Hilma. The national threshold is €60,000 for goods and services and €150,000 for construction works. Below these values, contracting authorities can purchase without publishing a notice on Hilma. Some contracting authorities voluntarily publish smaller procurements on Hilma, but many do not. These below-threshold procurements are often published on the contracting authority's own website, on regional procurement portals, or announced through direct market inquiries.

Framework agreement call-offs are another category that typically does not appear on Hilma. When a contracting authority has an existing framework agreement with one or more suppliers, individual orders or mini-competitions under that framework are conducted directly between the parties. The original framework agreement was competed and published on Hilma, but the subsequent call-offs are not separately announced. This means a significant volume of public purchasing happens without individual notices on Hilma.

Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) procurements follow a different pattern. The DPS establishment notice is published on Hilma, and new suppliers can join at any time. However, individual procurements within the DPS are sent directly to qualified suppliers within the system. These individual opportunities do not always appear as separate notices on Hilma. Being admitted to relevant DPS systems is therefore important for accessing these opportunities.

Some specialized sectors have additional channels. Defence and security procurements under the PUTU Act may have restricted publication requirements. Utilities sector entities (energy, water, transport) sometimes use their own procurement portals in addition to Hilma. Hansel, the state's central purchasing body, publishes its framework agreements on Hilma but also maintains its own website with additional detail.

The EU's TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) portal publishes all above-EU-threshold procurements from Finland and other EU/EEA countries. For Finnish procurements, TED notices are forwarded automatically from Hilma, so TED does not contain Finnish notices that are absent from Hilma. However, TED is essential if you also want to bid on public procurements in other EU member states.

Municipal and regional purchasing organizations sometimes publish procurement information on their own websites or through shared service portals. For example, some hospital districts, educational consortia, or regional waste management companies maintain their own procurement pages. These can be useful supplements to Hilma monitoring.

The practical implication for suppliers is clear: relying solely on Hilma means you will see the majority of above-threshold procurements but may miss below-threshold opportunities, framework call-offs, and DPS mini-competitions. A comprehensive approach combines Hilma with other sources – either through your own monitoring routine or through a service that aggregates them for you, as Haavi does.

Haavi is an AI-powered tender monitoring service that reads public procurement notices for you. Every notice published on Hilma is in Haavi, alongside notices from the EU's TED portal, small-procurement channels, municipal systems and other publication points – more than 60,000 procurements a week in total. You get a complete picture of the market from one service without monitoring each channel separately, which is especially valuable for companies operating across several sectors or regions, and for international suppliers who cannot read every Finnish notice.

Haavi's AI matching is fundamentally different from keyword search. Instead of defining exact keywords and CPV codes, Haavi analyses your company's capability profile and compares it automatically with every new notice. You also get suggestions for tenders that keyword search would never have found: the AI recognises sector-specific nuances even when the contracting authority describes the procurement in different terms. A 'digitalisation project' may involve software development even if the word never appears in the notice. Our customers find 3–5 times more relevant tenders with Haavi than with manual monitoring.

Monitoring is continuous: Haavi notifies you as soon as a matching tender is published, so you can react on publication day even to short-deadline national procurements. Manual monitoring easily costs several hours a week; Haavi replaces that routine and frees the time for preparing bids. For small and medium-sized companies without a dedicated monitoring resource, this is often the difference between taking part in public tenders at all or not.

When an interesting notice appears, Haavi helps you assess it: the RFP analysis highlights suitability requirements, award-criteria weightings and critical dates, and tells you whether the tender calls for a consortium or subcontractors, for example. The bid/no-bid decision is fast and well-founded, and the bid assistant helps you write the tender. Our users save on average 92% of the time spent working through documents.

Hilma remains the official source, and anyone participating in Finnish public procurement should know what is published there. But you don't need to watch it. Haavi reads Hilma and dozens of other sources for you, identifies the tenders that fit your company and tells you about them immediately. The trial is free for 14 days and requires no credit card.