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Civil & Infrastructure · Building & Construction
The council isn't just buying a building. It's scoring what the building does for its community.
Council design & construct tenders and government building programmes score social procurement, buildability and subcontractor management alongside price, and the social procurement section alone can decide the result. Builders who treat it as a checkbox keep handing that score to whoever didn't.
1,000+
Tender submissions lodged
$1B+
Contract value pursued
100%
Client retention
20+ yrs
QS & bid management
The opportunity
How government building work is actually bought
Government building work reaches contractors through panels first and open tenders second. Councils procure heavily through platforms like VendorPanel and, in New South Wales, through Local Government Procurement (LGP) panels, appointment means invited quotes and tenders flow to you without the open-market scrum. Alongside the panels sit council design & construct tenders and state government building programmes: community facilities, education, health and civic works, released in steady cycles.
What makes this niche distinctive is what the evaluation rewards. A government building tender is scored by people accountable to a community, so the criteria reach past the building: local employment, Aboriginal participation, apprentices, local subcontractors. In Victoria, Local Jobs First requirements are woven into the evaluation itself. The builders who win consistently are rarely the cheapest, they're the ones whose non-price response gave the evaluation panel something defensible to score.
Buildability matters too, and for a D&C tender it's the difference between a bid and a design review the council actually wants to read.
What we deliver
The full precontracts function, tuned for builders
01
Bid management
One owner from RFT release to lodgement, returnables schedule, subcontractor pricing coordination, clarifications, submission. Your CA and PM stay on live projects.
02
Social procurement that scores
Local Jobs First responses and Aboriginal Participation Plans can carry 10–20% of the total score. We write commitments that are specific, deliverable and scoreable, not the boilerplate every evaluator has learned to discount.
03
Buildability narrative
For D&C tenders, a methodology that engages the actual design, staging, services coordination, value engineering observations, written from a session with your site team, not from the last bid.
04
Subcontractor management plans
How you select, contract and manage trades, with local and social-benefit suppliers built into the story, because that's where the subcontractor plan and the social procurement score meet.
05
Estimating & BOQs
Backed by 20+ years of quantity surveying. Trade-by-trade build-ups and BOQs that reconcile with your programme and your methodology when the evaluation panel cross-reads them.
06
Panels & bid library
VendorPanel and LGP panel applications, plus a maintained library of project sheets, CVs and systems evidence so every invited quote starts warm instead of cold.
How these tenders are scored
What building evaluators score, and where bids bleed points
The sections that decide it
- Methodology & buildability, evidence you've engaged this design and this site, not buildings in general
- Programme, staging that survives cross-reading against the methodology
- Social procurement, Local Jobs First and Aboriginal Participation Plans, commonly 10–20% of the score
- Subcontractor & supply chain management, selection, engagement and payment discipline
- Capability & track record, comparable buildings, tailored CVs, referees who'll actually be called
Where the points get lost
- Checkbox social procurement, a restated policy where the evaluator wanted named commitments
- A methodology that never mentions the design it's supposedly building
- No subcontractor story beyond "we have established relationships"
- A risk register from a template, identical to the one lodged with the last three bids
- CVs listing everything each person has ever done except the projects that resemble this one
Evaluation panels have to defend their scores in a report. Give them something defensible.
FAQ
Construction tender questions, answered straight
How do we get onto VendorPanel or LGP panels for building work?
Registration is the easy part; appointment is the contest. Panel applications are scored on systems, capability, insurances and comparable works, and councils use the appointed list as their default shopping list for years. We prepare panel applications with the same discipline as a full tender, because a panel place is worth more than any single project, and a rushed application quietly costs you every invitation you never see.
How much of a council D&C tender score is non-price?
Civil and construction tenders commonly score 30–50% on non-price criteria, and on government building work the social procurement component alone, Local Jobs First, Aboriginal Participation Plans, can carry 10–20% of the total. That's a decisive margin sitting in sections most builders write last, at midnight, from the previous bid.
Can you work with our estimator?
That's the standard setup. Your estimator runs trade pricing and subcontractor quotes; we write the methodology, social procurement and management plans that decide the non-price score, and we reconcile programme, methodology and price before lodgement so the evaluation panel can't find daylight between them. No estimator in-house? Our 20+ years of QS work covers that side too.
Also in Civil & Infrastructure
Council or government building tender on your desk?
Send it through before the social procurement schedule becomes a midnight job. Go / no-go within 24 hours, scoring read, panel check, and a straight answer on whether it's winnable.