Maybe you’ve never tendered before, and you’re trying to understand what the process actually involves before deciding whether it’s worth pursuing.

Or maybe you’ve been invited to submit one by an existing client, a government buyer, or a panel you didn’t even know you were registered for, and you’re now facing a Request for Tender full of unfamiliar terms and a looming deadline, wondering where on earth to start.

Never fear! Both are completely normal places to be in, and neither means you’re behind. We know, because at Tender Relief, we meet people at all stages of their tendering journey, and even highly experienced bid professionals can feel out of their depth at times.

Tendering isn’t reserved for large corporations with dedicated bid teams. Every year, thousands of small and medium Australian businesses win contracts with local councils, state agencies, federal departments, and private companies. But tendering is a structured, competitive process with certain rules and expectations. Understanding how it works before you dive in will save you a lot of wasted time, effort, and energy.

This guide walks through what tendering is, how the process unfolds, and what you need to consider before submitting your first response.

What is Tendering?

Tendering is a formal, structured process that typically starts when a buyer (also called a procurer) identifies their need for a product or service and publishes a formal request inviting businesses (suppliers) to meet this need. Interested suppliers then prepare and submit a formal, written response to this request, detailing their relevant experience, capacity and capability to deliver, and their pricing.

The buyer reviews every submission against a published set of criteria and awards the contract to whichever supplier represents the best overall fit and value for them, not necessarily the cheapest option.

Buyers and opportunities exist in both the public and private sector, and across a huge range of industries from construction to cleaning, information technology to education. All levels of government in Australia (local, state, federal) use tendering. Government policies require a formal tender process once a contract reaches a certain financial threshold, and these thresholds vary by jurisdiction and are updated periodically. Currently, for example, most Australian states, including New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia, generally require an open tender for goods and services contracts above $250,000. Victoria’s threshold is somewhat lower, at $150,000. Federally, the threshold sits at $125,000 (including GST).

What are the different types of tender opportunities?

Depending on the size and complexity of a contract, a buyer’s request might take one of several different forms:

• Request for Tender (RFT): This is the most common and formal type, used for well-defined, detailed contracts. Suppliers submit a full written response covering methodology, experience, and pricing, assessed against a published set of criteria.
• Request for Proposal (RFP): Similar to an RFT, but typically used when a buyer is open to different approaches to solving their problem. Suppliers can propose their own solution rather than responding to a tightly defined scope.
• Request for Quote (RFQ): Used for simpler, lower value, or clearly defined purchases, where price and basic compliance are the main deciding factors rather than a detailed written methodology.

You might also see a Request for Information (RFI), an Approach to Market (ATM), or an Expression of Interest (EOI). These are often issued before a formal tendering process to gauge interest and shortlist suitable suppliers. Responding well at this stage can be your first opportunity to get on a buyer’s radar, well before a full tender is ever released.

Why do businesses tender?

Tendering can open doors that direct sales approaches can’t. Government contracts in particular offer:

• Reliable, ongoing revenue. Government contracts are often multi-year, providing more predictable income than one-off private sector work.
• Credibility. Winning a government tender is a strong signal to other prospective clients that your business is capable and compliant.
• Access to larger projects. Tendering can help smaller businesses compete for work that might otherwise be out of reach.
• A level playing field. Recent “buy local” procurement policies across several Australian states have made it easier for small and medium businesses to compete against larger, established players.

That said, tendering isn’t free. Preparing a quality response takes real time, and not every opportunity is worth pursuing. This brings us to several key steps in understanding the tendering process.

Seven Key Steps to Understanding the Tendering Process

Step 1: Decide whether you’re ready to tender

Before searching for opportunities, it’s worth being honest with yourself about two things:

1. Do you have the capacity to take on more work right now? Winning a tender means you’re contractually obligated to deliver. There’s no room to under-deliver because you’re stretched thin elsewhere.
2. Do you have the time and resources to prepare a genuinely competitive response? A rushed, generic submission is worse than not bidding at all, because it costs you time without a realistic shot at winning.

If the answer to both is yes, you’re ready to start looking for opportunities.

Step 2: Find the right opportunities

Tender opportunities in Australia are published across a range of portals, depending on the location, whether it’s for public or private sector, and – if public – the level of government:

• Federal government: AusTender is the primary portal for Australian Government procurement.
• State and territory: Each state runs its own tenders website (for example, buy NSW, Queensland’s QTenders, Buying for Victoria).
• Local council: Many councils publish tenders directly or through a shared regional portal.
• Private tender platforms: There are several subscription services that gather opportunities across public and private sector buyers and can notify you automatically when relevant opportunities are published.

Rather than checking every portal manually, many experienced tenderers set up keyword alerts so relevant opportunities land in their inbox as soon as they’re published. Timing matters! The earlier you spot an opportunity, the more time you have to prepare a considered response.

Step 3: Make a bid/no-bid decision

Not every tender you find is worth pursuing. Before committing time to a response, experienced bidders run a quick internal assessment, often called a bid/no-bid decision. This considers things like:

• Does the project fit your core business strategy?
• Are you ideally positioned to win?
• Do you understand (or are you able to find out) the buyer’s goals, issues, and biases?
• Do you have the necessary corporate commitment and resources to bid well?
• Are you able to deliver the contract if you win it?

Shortlisting the opportunities you have a real chance of winning, and letting go of the ones you don’t, is one of the most valuable habits a business can build. It protects your time and keeps your win rate healthy.

Step 4: Understand what you’re being asked to do

Once you’ve decided to bid, the RFT document itself becomes your roadmap. Government tenders, in particular, are built around a published set of evaluation criteria. Essentially, this is a list of questions your response needs to answer, each carrying a specific weighting.

It’s worth reading the entire document closely before you start writing, and noting:

• Mandatory requirements (often signalled by words like “must” or “shall”). These are usually pass/fail. If you miss one, your entire submission can be excluded no matter how strong the rest of it is.
• Assessed evaluation criteria. These are scored and weighted, and typically cover your experience, methodology, capability, and price.
• Formatting requirements. This includes page limits, font size, file format, or file naming conventions. These might sound trivial, but non-compliance is one of the most common reasons tenders are rejected before they’re even assessed on merit.

Step 5: Plan your approach before you start writing

It’s tempting, once you understand what’s being asked, to open a blank document and start writing straight away – especially with a deadline already ticking. Resist this temptation! The strongest tender responses are planned before they’re drafted, and skipping this step is one of the most common reasons a submission ends up disorganised, repetitive, or missing something critical.

A simple planning approach before you write a single word might include these steps:

• Build a requirements matrix. List every mandatory requirement and every assessed criterion from the RFT in one place, alongside its weighting. This becomes your working checklist for the rest of the process, and your first line of defence against accidentally missing something.
• Map your evidence before you write. For each criterion, note which specific project, outcome, or piece of proof you’ll use to answer it, before you start drafting the actual sentences. This stops you having an awkward realisation halfway through a great writing session that your strongest example doesn’t actually fit anywhere.
• Identify your gaps early. If a criterion doesn’t have an obvious answer yet, that’s something to sort out now, not something to discover two days before submission and you’re feeling every bit of deadline pressure. Do you need a referee’s contact details, a subcontractor arrangement to confirm, a
• Decide your overall win theme. Beyond answering each question individually, think about the one or two things you want the panel to remember about your business by the end of the document. A clear, consistent thread running through your response reads far more convincingly than a set of disconnected answers.
• Draft an outline before the full response. Even a rough one-page plan of the points you’ll cover in each section makes the actual writing faster and helps the finished document feel more coherent and unified.
• Pull together your compliance evidence. Alongside your content plan, collect the actual documents you’ll need to attach or reference. These will likely be current insurance certificates, ISO or other industry certifications, licences, and WHS accreditations. Confirm they’re valid and within date before you go any further, since a single expired document can exclude an otherwise excellent submission.

This planning stage doesn’t need to take long, but treating it as a critical, necessary step every tender (rather than something you’ll figure out along the way) almost always proves a smart move because of the rework it prevents.

It’s worth saying, too, that this kind of preparation doesn’t need to start from scratch every time you tender. Being “bid ready” (which includes keeping your insurances, certifications, and CVs current and easy to access at all times, rather than only when a tender lands) turns this step from a scramble into a quick check. It’s one of the simplest habits that separates businesses who find tendering manageable from those who find it stressful.

Step 6: Write and submit your response

A strong tender response answers each criterion directly, backs up every claim with specific evidence (project names, measurable outcomes, client references), and stays within the format requirements set out in the RFT. Generic, marketing-style language tends to score poorly, as evaluators are looking for proof, not promises.

Submissions are almost always lodged through an online portal, and deadlines are strictly enforced. It’s good practice to submit well ahead of the closing time, since portals can slow down or become unreachable in the final rush before deadline.

Step 7: What happens after you submit

Once submissions close, a panel of assessors (usually three or more people) scores each response independently against the published criteria, then meets to reach a consensus score. Mandatory criteria are checked first, and only compliant submissions move on to be scored against the weighted criteria.

The buyer then notifies all bidders of the outcome. If you’re unsuccessful, it’s well worth requesting a debrief. Feedback from a genuine evaluator is one of the fastest ways to improve your next submission, and most agencies are happy to provide it.

Getting Started

Tendering rewards preparation more than almost any other type of business development. The businesses that win consistently aren’t necessarily the cheapest or the biggest. They’re the ones that read the brief carefully, answer exactly what’s being asked, and back every claim with real evidence.

If you’re weighing up whether to tender for the first time, or you’ve submitted a few responses without much luck, it’s often worth having an experienced set of eyes review your approach before your next submission. Small adjustments to structure, evidence, and compliance can make a significant difference to your win rate. If you’d like more information about what support might look like for you, check out our Tenders, Grants, and Proposals Support or Getting Bid Ready services or let’s talk directly.