One department is a tenth of the state
Short answer
The Department of Housing and Works published 254 of Western Australia’s 2,428 tenders — 10.5 per cent. The state’s whole market comes from 265 buyers, against 421 in New South Wales for only a quarter more volume.
Western Australia is the second-largest tender market in Australia by volume and the smallest by buyer count relative to that volume. In the twelve months to 24 August 2026 it published 2,428 tenders from 265 distinct organisations. New South Wales published 3,125 — 29 per cent more — from 421 organisations, 59 per cent more. Per opportunity, WA has far fewer doors.
The concentration is sharpest at the top. The Department of Housing and Works published 254 tenders, which is 10.5 per cent of everything released in the state. For comparison, the busiest publisher in New South Wales managed 87 tenders, or 2.8 per cent of that state. Nothing in Australian procurement matches the WA department’s share.
For a supplier this cuts both ways. The market is genuinely knowable: ten organisations account for roughly a third of it, and a small team can maintain real relationships across that. But concentration is also exposure. A supplier whose pipeline depends on one department is depending on one budget cycle and one procurement team.
Three of these ten are private head contractors tendering subcontract packages, not government agencies.
The most formal market in the country
Short answer
71.7 per cent of Western Australian tenders are full requests for tender, against 59.5 per cent nationally. Requests for proposal are 1.1 per cent against 6.6 per cent — WA almost never asks a supplier to design the solution.
Set the WA format mix against the national one and the state looks unusually rigid. Requests for tender take 71.7 per cent of tenders, twelve points above the national share. Quotation requests take 12.7 per cent and expressions of interest 12.3, both close to national. What has almost vanished is the request for proposal: 1.1 per cent of WA tenders against 6.6 per cent across the country, a six-fold difference.
The practical meaning is direct. A request for proposal invites you to describe how you would solve a problem, and rewards a supplier who thinks well. A request for tender hands you a specification and asks what you will charge to deliver exactly that. Western Australia overwhelmingly does the second. Bids there are won on compliance, evidence and price, not on the elegance of an approach.
Requests for information are near-absent too, at 0.9 per cent. Combined with the low proposal share, that says WA agencies arrive at market with the specification already written. There is correspondingly less opportunity to influence what a tender asks for before it is published — and correspondingly more value in being demonstrably compliant when it is.
Same twelve-month window. WA runs full tenders far more, and proposals almost never.
A quarter of WA work closes inside sixteen days
Short answer
The Western Australian median response window is 23 days, one faster than the national 24. But the quartile matters more: 25 per cent of WA tenders allow 16 days or fewer.
The state median of 23 days sounds unremarkable. The lower quartile does not. A quarter of Western Australian tenders close within 16 days of release, against 19 days nationally. That is the number that decides whether late discovery costs you the bid, and WA runs three days tighter than the country at exactly the point where it hurts.
Council work is faster again. Council-tagged WA tenders run a 17-day median — the fastest council market of any state we measured, and six days quicker than the WA state average. City of Rockingham runs 16 days across 48 tenders, City of Albany 20 across 48.
The spread between individual buyers is wide enough to plan around. Rio Tinto West Coast runs a 12-day median across 40 tenders and Lake Maintenance 17 across 80, while the Public Transport Authority allows 34 across 39 tenders and WA Primary Health Alliance 39. Knowing which of those you are bidding to is worth more than the state average.
| Buyer | Tenders | Mostly buys | Median window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rio Tinto West Coast | 40 | Engineering Services | 12 days |
| City of Rockingham | 48 | Council | 16 days |
| Lake Maintenance (WA) | 80 | Government | 17 days |
| City of Albany | 48 | Council | 20 days |
| Dept of Housing and Works | 254 | Government | 21 days |
| WA Police Force | 63 | Government | 21 days |
| Main Roads Western Australia | 43 | Government | 25 days |
| Public Transport Authority | 39 | Government | 34 days |
A tenth of the market is published by private companies
Short answer
Programmed Facility Management (127), Lake Maintenance (80) and Rio Tinto West Coast (40) published 247 tenders between them — 10 per cent of the state — as head contractors tendering subcontract packages.
Three of Western Australia’s ten busiest publishers are not agencies. Programmed Facility Management sits second in the state with 127 tenders, Lake Maintenance third with 80, and Rio Tinto West Coast ninth with 40. Between them that is 247 packages, roughly a tenth of everything published in WA.
They appear because head contractors holding large maintenance and construction contracts tender their subcontract work through the same public channels agencies use. The packages are real, open and frequently smaller than the government work around them — which makes them the most accessible tenders in the state for a small trade supplier.
This is also where a search built on agency names fails hardest. Western Australia has a heavier private-publisher share than any other state in the corpus, so a WA supplier filtering for government organisations is discarding a tenth of their market before they start.
What Western Australia buys
Short answer
Government-tagged work leads at 1,025 tenders, then council work at 280 and construction at 244. Electrical and cabling is unusually strong at 161, and IT at 133 from 78 buyers.
The category picture is dominated by the state government tag at 1,025 tenders from 105 buyers — a direct consequence of the concentration described above. Below it, council work accounts for 280 tenders from 89 buyers and runs the fastest clock in the state at a 17-day median.
Construction at 244 and civil engineering at 189 are the volume trades. Electrical and cabling is notably strong at 161 tenders from 46 buyers, higher than its share in most other states. Security and fire runs 116 from 50 buyers.
Information technology is a fragmented 133 tenders from 78 buyers — an average of 1.7 tenders per buyer, and a 26-day median. For an IT supplier that means WA is the second-largest state IT market in the country but offers almost no repeat business from any single organisation.
A tender can carry more than one category tag, so these sum above 2,428.
When Western Australian work is released
Short answer
July is the busiest month at 291 tenders and December the quietest at 138. The state follows the national financial-year pattern, with a secondary peak in October and November.
Western Australia releases work on the national rhythm. July is the peak at 291 tenders, tracking the start of the Australian financial year, with a second sustained peak across October and November at 262 and 267. December falls to 138 and February to 149.
The swing is about 2.1 times between the quietest and busiest month — real, but gentler than Victoria at 3.1 times. A WA supplier can expect work in every month of the year, with roughly double the choice in July than in December.
The practical use is the trough. December, January and February together carry fewer tenders than July and October combined, and that is the window in which the reusable half of a submission gets built — the past-project evidence, referees and accreditations that a 16-day WA quartile leaves no time to assemble later.
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 2,428 of them carrying a Western Australian region tag and released inside a single 365-day window ending 24 August 2026, the newest release date in the snapshot. A tender offered across several states counts once in each, so it appears in this Western Australian total and in the other states it was offered in.
Buyers are counted under the organisation name as published, without merging or normalising, so an agency publishing under two spellings appears twice. Response windows count tenders 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 WA and national figures are directly comparable. Buyer-level medians are shown only where the buyer has at least five measurable tenders.
Three limits. This ranks who publishes work, not who wins it: the research snapshot holds no awards, no suppliers and no contract values. Contract awards, who holds them and what they were worth are in the live block at the top of this page, from published award data, refreshed nightly and dated. No figure compares one year to another, because year totals in this snapshot reflect how long the archive retains records rather than how the market moved. And coverage is one research snapshot, not the whole Western Australian market — every share is a share of these tenders.
Frequently asked questions
How many tenders are published in Western Australia each year?
Our research corpus holds 2,428 Western Australian tenders released in the twelve months to 24 August 2026, from 265 distinct buyers. That makes WA the second-largest state market by volume after New South Wales, and the most concentrated by buyer count.
Who publishes the most tenders in WA?
The Department of Housing and Works, with 254 tenders in twelve months — 10.5 per cent of the entire state. Programmed Facility Management follows with 127 and Lake Maintenance with 80, both private head contractors tendering subcontract packages.
How long do you get to respond to a WA tender?
A median of 23 days, one day faster than the national figure. The quartile matters more: 25 per cent of WA tenders allow 16 days or fewer, against 19 days nationally. Council work is faster again at a 17-day median.
Why are so many WA tenders full requests for tender?
Requests for tender make up 71.7 per cent of WA tenders against 59.5 per cent nationally, while requests for proposal are 1.1 per cent against 6.6. WA agencies mostly arrive at market with the specification already written, so bids are won on compliance, evidence and price rather than on proposed approach.
Do private companies publish tenders in Western Australia?
Yes, and heavily. Three of the ten busiest WA publishers are private head contractors, together accounting for 247 tenders — about a tenth of the state. Filtering a tender search to government organisations discards that entire layer.
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.