No buyer holds even three per cent
Short answer
Victoria published 2,010 tenders from 311 buyers. The Department of Transport and Planning led with 60 listings, 3.0 per cent of the state. Seven of the top ten are councils.
Victoria is the second-most fragmented large market in Australia after New South Wales. In the twelve months to 24 August 2026 it published 2,010 listings from 311 distinct organisations, and the busiest of them released 60 — three per cent of the state. Western Australia, with only twenty per cent more volume, concentrates 10.5 per cent of its market in a single department.
Councils dominate the ranking without any of them dominating the market. Kingston City Council published 41 listings, the City of Melton 33, the City of Melbourne 32, Glenelg Shire 27 and Alpine Shire 26. The largest council in the state is seventh on the list, and a shire in the far south-west is ninth.
Two border councils, Albury and Wodonga, appear in the Victorian profile with 34 and 33 listings because their tenders carry tags for both sides of the Murray. Albury City Council is a New South Wales organisation; it is here because Victorian suppliers are genuinely part of its market.
The flattest top ten of any state after New South Wales. Albury and Wodonga are border councils whose listings carry both state tags.
Victoria buys land management, not just buildings
Short answer
Grounds maintenance is the fourth-largest category at 120 listings from 68 buyers, and environmental and heritage work adds 96. Together they outrank general construction at 140.
The Victorian category profile is the most distinctive in the country. Behind the expected leaders — government at 469 listings and civil engineering at 238 — sits grounds maintenance at 120 from 68 buyers, then water and sewage at 115, environmental and heritage conservation at 96 and waste management at 90. General construction, which leads or nearly leads in most states, comes fourth at 140.
Read together, land and environment work — grounds maintenance, environmental conservation, waste — accounts for 306 listings from a wide spread of buyers. Victorian councils and agencies buy vegetation control, park maintenance, tree services, revegetation and waste collection at a volume no other state matches proportionally.
For a supplier in those trades this is the most important state in Australia by a distance, and the buyer base is broad rather than concentrated: 68 organisations published grounds maintenance work in twelve months, which is more buyers than the entire Northern Territory has.
A listing can carry more than one category tag, so these sum above 2,010.
Formal, and it shortlists before it buys
Short answer
Requests for tender are 66.7 per cent of Victorian listings against 59.5 nationally, and expressions of interest 15.4 against 12.9. Requests for proposal are 2.4 per cent against 6.6.
Victoria runs a formal market. Two thirds of its listings are full requests for tender, seven points above the national share, and quotation requests fall to 12.5 per cent from a national 14.0. What is genuinely unusual is the expression of interest at 15.4 per cent, above every large state except New South Wales.
The combination describes a specific procurement habit: shortlist first, then run a full tender against the shortlist. For a supplier that means the EOI is not a minor formality in Victoria. Missing one frequently means being absent from the tender that follows, and an EOI is cheap to answer relative to a full bid.
Requests for proposal are nearly absent at 2.4 per cent, a quarter of the national rate. Like Western Australia, Victoria mostly arrives at market with the specification written. Bids are won on evidence and price rather than on a proposed approach.
Formal like Western Australia, but with a much heavier use of the expression of interest as a shortlisting round.
Middling on time, narrow on spread
Short answer
The Victorian median response window is 24 days, matching the national figure. The middle half runs 20 to 29 days — a tighter spread than most states.
Victoria sits exactly on the national median at 24 days, between Queensland at 22 and New South Wales at 25. What distinguishes it is consistency: the middle half of Victorian tenders falls between 20 and 29 days, a nine-day spread against thirteen in New South Wales and fifteen in the Australian Capital Territory.
That predictability is worth something. A Victorian supplier can plan on roughly four weeks and be right most of the time, where a New South Wales supplier faces a genuinely wider range and a Western Australian one has to allow for a quarter of work closing inside sixteen days.
The buyer-level spread is narrow too. The City of Wodonga runs the fastest significant median at 15 days and Wellington Shire 18, while the slowest — Albury City Council, the City of Port Phillip and the Department of Education — all sit at 28. Thirteen days separates the fastest from the slowest major buyer, against twenty-two in Western Australia.
| Buyer | Listings | Mostly buys | Median window |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of Wodonga | 33 | Civil Engineering | 15 days |
| City of Melton | 33 | Landscaping | 21 days |
| Alpine Shire Council | 26 | Civil Engineering | 21 days |
| Glenelg Shire Council | 27 | Public Private Partnerships | 22 days |
| City of Melbourne | 32 | Council | 24 days |
| Kingston City Council | 41 | Construction | 25 days |
| Dept of Energy, Environment & Climate | 30 | Government | 27 days |
| Dept of Transport and Planning | 60 | Government | 28 days |
The sharpest season in the country
Short answer
July ran 272 listings and February 89 — a factor of three, the widest swing of any large state. September and October follow close behind July.
Victoria has the most pronounced tender season in Australia. July peaked at 272 listings, September ran 248 and October 234, while February bottomed at 89 and January at 102. The busiest month offers three times the choice of the quietest.
The July peak is the sharpest single financial-year effect we measured anywhere. Where Queensland and New South Wales spread their peak across spring, Victoria concentrates a burst immediately after 1 July and then sustains high volume through to November.
For a Victorian supplier the planning implication is stronger than elsewhere. The four biggest months — July, September, October and November — carry just over half the year between them, and with a 20-day lower quartile there is no capacity to assemble evidence once they arrive. January and February are the build months, and they are quiet enough that treating them as anything else wastes the only slack in the year.
The eleven complete months of the measurement window, September 2025 to July 2026. August is excluded because the window splits it across both ends.
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 2,010 carrying a Victorian 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 states counts once in each, which is why Albury City Council — a New South Wales organisation — appears here: its border listings carry both tags.
Buyers are counted under the organisation name as published, without merging or normalising. Response windows count listings with both a release and a closing date and a gap between 0 and 365 days, the same rule as our national response-times research, so the Victorian and national figures are directly comparable. Buyer-level medians are shown only where the buyer has at least five measurable listings.
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, because year totals in this snapshot reflect archive retention rather than market movement. And coverage is one research snapshot, not the whole Victorian market.
Frequently asked questions
How many tenders are published in Victoria each year?
Our research corpus holds 2,010 Victorian listings released in the twelve months to 24 August 2026, from 311 distinct buyers. That makes Victoria the fourth-largest state market by volume and the second-most fragmented by buyer count.
Who publishes the most tenders in Victoria?
The Department of Transport and Planning, with 60 listings — only 3.0 per cent of the state. Kingston City Council follows with 41 and the Department of Education with 37. The City of Melbourne is seventh with 32.
When is the busiest month for Victorian tenders?
July, at 272 listings, immediately after the financial year turns. February is the quietest at 89. That three-times swing is the sharpest of any large Australian state.
How long do you get to respond to a Victorian tender?
A median of 24 days, exactly the national figure, with the middle half falling between 20 and 29. The spread is narrower than most states, so four weeks is a reasonable planning assumption in Victoria in a way it is not in Western Australia.
What does Victoria buy more of than other states?
Land and environment work. Grounds maintenance runs 120 listings from 68 buyers, environmental and heritage conservation 96 and waste management 90 — together more than general construction at 140. Vegetation control, park maintenance and tree services are a larger market here than anywhere else in Australia.
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.