The most generous clock in the country
Short answer
The ACT median response window is 29 days, against 22 in Queensland and 23 in Western Australia. Its upper quartile is 41 days and its mean 34.
The Australian Capital Territory gives suppliers substantially more time than anywhere else in Australia. Its median window is 29 days — five above the national 24 and seven above Queensland. Its lower quartile, 26 days, is higher than the median of every other jurisdiction we measured. Three quarters of ACT tenders allow up to 41 days.
The mean of 34 days, five above the median, points to a long tail of genuinely extended windows. Canberra Health Services runs a 41-day median across 15 listings and the Justice and Community Safety Directorate the same across 13. The High Speed Rail Authority runs 38 across nine.
For a small supplier this is the friendliest market in the country on time alone. Six weeks is enough to write a considered bid around existing work, which is not true of a Western Australian tender closing in sixteen days. The trade-off is that there is far less of it: 274 listings against Queensland’s 2,274.
The ACT is the slowest market in Australia and Queensland the fastest — a seven-day spread across the country.
Almost no quick work
Short answer
Requests for tender are 72.3 per cent of ACT listings, the highest in Australia. Requests for quotation are 5.1 per cent against a national 14.0 — under a third of the national rate.
The ACT runs the most formal procurement in the country. Nearly three quarters of its listings are full requests for tender, edging out Western Australia at 71.7 per cent. Expressions of interest take 11.7 per cent and requests for proposal 4.4.
What is missing is the quotation request. At 5.1 per cent of listings, against 14.0 nationally and 20.0 in the Northern Territory, the ACT publishes proportionally under a third as much of the fast, simple, priced work that gives smaller suppliers a way in. In absolute terms that is roughly fourteen quotation requests across a whole year.
Prequalification is effectively absent too, at a single listing. So a supplier cannot get onto a Territory panel and wait for work the way they would in the Northern Territory or Queensland. In the ACT, every opportunity is a full bid, and there are 274 of them a year.
The highest full-tender share in Australia, and the lowest quotation share. Entry-level work is scarce here.
One directorate, then a long flat tail
Short answer
The City and Environment Directorate published 51 of the ACT’s 274 listings, 18.6 per cent. The next-busiest buyer published 19.
The City and Environment Directorate dominates the Territory with 51 listings — 18.6 per cent of the market, and nearly three times the next buyer. After it the ranking flattens abruptly: the Department of Defence’s DSRG at 19, Canberra Health Services at 15, the Department of Parliamentary Services and Infrastructure Canberra at 14 each.
Federal bodies sit alongside Territory ones throughout, which is a Canberra peculiarity. The Department of Parliamentary Services, the National Capital Authority, the High Speed Rail Authority and Defence’s DSRG all publish here, so an ACT supplier is selling into two tiers of government from the same city.
The Territory’s 58 buyers across 274 listings works out at 4.7 tenders each — high by national standards, and another sign of a small market with committed repeat buyers rather than a long occasional tail.
Federal and Territory bodies interleave: four of these ten are Commonwealth organisations.
A professional-services market
Short answer
Government-tagged work is 186 of 274 listings. Behind it, business professional services leads at 24 — ahead of information technology at 16 and civil engineering at 13.
The ACT has the highest government-tag concentration in Australia at 67.9 per cent of listings, which reflects a jurisdiction with little heavy industry and no regional council tail. What sits behind that tag is the interesting part.
Business professional services is the second-largest category at 24 listings from 14 buyers — consultancy, policy, evaluation, advisory work. Information technology follows at 16 from 14 buyers, environmental and heritage at 15, medical and healthcare at 15, and transportation at 14. Civil engineering, which leads or nearly leads in most states, manages 13.
The composition matters for who should bother with this market. A civil contractor will find more work in a single Queensland shire than in the whole Territory. A consultancy, an evaluator, a policy firm or a small IT provider will find a concentration of exactly their kind of buyer, paying attention, with six weeks to respond.
| Category | Listings | Buyers | Median window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Government | 186 | 37 | 30 days |
| Business Professional Services | 24 | 14 | 30 days |
| Information Technology | 16 | 14 | 27 days |
| Engineering Services | 15 | 11 | 38 days |
| Environmental / Heritage | 15 | 7 | 27 days |
| Medical & Healthcare | 15 | 4 | 29 days |
| Transportation & Logistics | 14 | 10 | 27 days |
| Civil Engineering & Construction | 13 | 8 | 32 days |
Why there is no ACT tender calendar here
Short answer
At 274 listings a year the Territory averages 23 a month. A single programme swings a month by half, so any seasonal shape we drew would be noise presented as advice.
Every other state page in this series carries a monthly release chart, because at 500 to 3,000 listings a year the shape is stable enough to plan against. The ACT is not. Across the measurement window its complete months ranged from 14 listings to 38, on a yearly average of 23. That is a swing of nearly three times, on counts small enough that a couple of dozen tenders from any one directorate would produce it.
We could publish the numbers and let them look like a season. Instead we are saying plainly that this market is too small for a monthly calendar to mean anything, and that a Canberra supplier should plan on a steady couple of dozen listings a month rather than trying to time it.
The national calendar still applies to the buyers here that are federal, and the general advice holds: the summer is when the reusable half of a bid gets built. In the ACT the 26-day lower quartile makes that less urgent than anywhere else in the country.
How we measured
The corpus is a Stipple research dataset of 33,064 publicly listed tenders observed on 29 August 2026. This page uses the 274 carrying an Australian Capital Territory region tag and released inside a single 365-day window ending 24 August 2026, the newest release date in the snapshot. A listing offered across several jurisdictions counts once in each.
This is the smallest market in the series and the caveats scale with it. Buyer-level medians are shown only where the buyer has at least five measurable listings, and the listing count is printed beside every median so a reader can weigh it — Canberra Health Services’ 41-day figure rests on 15 listings, the High Speed Rail Authority’s 38-day figure on nine. Category counts in the teens should be read as indicative of composition, not as precise market sizing.
Three limits. This ranks who publishes work, not who wins it: the corpus holds no awards, no suppliers and no contract values. No figure compares one year to another. And we have deliberately omitted a monthly seasonal chart because the market is too small to support one — that is a decision about what the data can bear, not an oversight.
Frequently asked questions
How many tenders are published in the ACT each year?
Our research corpus holds 274 Australian Capital Territory listings released in the twelve months to 24 August 2026, from 58 distinct buyers. It is the smallest Australian jurisdiction in the corpus.
How long do you get to respond to an ACT tender?
A median of 29 days — the most generous in Australia — with a quarter allowing 26 days or fewer and three quarters within 41. Canberra Health Services and the Justice and Community Safety Directorate both run 41-day medians.
Who publishes the most tenders in Canberra?
The City and Environment Directorate, with 51 listings, or 18.6 per cent of the Territory. The Department of Defence’s DSRG follows with 19 and Canberra Health Services with 15. Federal and Territory bodies publish side by side here.
Is the ACT a good market for a small supplier?
It depends on the trade. On time, it is the friendliest in the country. On accessibility, it is the hardest: quotation requests are 5.1 per cent of listings against 14.0 nationally, which is roughly fourteen quick jobs a year, and prequalification is effectively absent. Consultancies and small IT providers fare better here than trades.
Why is there no monthly tender calendar for the ACT?
Because 274 listings a year averages 23 a month, and a single directorate releasing a programme swings a month by half. Any seasonal shape we drew would be noise. Every larger state page in this series does carry a monthly chart.
Sources and further reading
- 01Stipple tender search — the live corpus this research feeds
- 02Stipple tender source registry — every source, its access and its latest run
Educational guidance, not a forensic certification. Detection technologies and standards change; review material decisions against current evidence.