Victoria has emerged as Australia’s leading state for construction project tendering, a new analysis has found.

Construction tender management platform E1 has released its quarterly analysis of tendering activity across the nation for the March quarter.

The analysis is based on activity which has been captured on the E1 database.

According to the data, Victoria is the leading state for overall tendering activity.

The state leads the nation in tender volume, tender intensity and public tendering visibility.

Victoria is followed by Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.

Neither the Northern Territory nor the Australian Capital Territory are considered in the analysis.

Key report findings include that:

• Victoria is the strongest state on current market activity measures, leading on both tender volume and tender intensity.
• Across all states, public tenders account for most of the activity. Across Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, public tendering accounts for 81.2 percent, 74.6 percent, 73.3 percent and 71.5 percent of tenders respectively.
• Larger projects are more common across eastern seaboard states. Across tendering value bands, the $1-5 million band is most common across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. By contrast tenders in South Australia and Western Australia are more heavily weighted toward projects under 1 million.
• In terms of category make-up, tenders in Victoria and Queensland are more weighted toward education. By contrast, those in NSW and Western Australia are more weighted toward commercial activity and government and refurbishment activity respectively.

(image source: E1)

Overall, E1 concludes that Victoria is the leading market.

“Victoria emerges as the leading state market for tendering in the current reporting period,” the report concludes.

“It leads on the core activity measures — highest tender volume, highest tender intensity, and strongest public visibility — while maintaining a strong mid-market project profile and a sector mix led by Education.

“New South Wales remains a major market by project base and total activity, but its lower tender intensity and lower public weighting mean it doesn’t perform as strongly on a tender-focused view.

“Queensland ranks as the strongest alternative major market, combining high tender volume, strong intensity, and more public tenders overall than NSW.

“South Australia and Western Australia remain smaller markets, although both show useful structural strengths.

“Tasmania is a much smaller market and should be interpreted more cautiously.”

(image source: E1)

Mixed outlook for Victoria’s construction sector

Victoria’s status as the leading market for tenders comes as current market conditions and the forward outlook across the state’s broader construction sector (residential, commercial and civil combine) remains mixed.

In the residential sector, the state is lagging much of the rest of the country in terms of the recovery in new home building.

Meanwhile, conditions in some parts of the commercial sector (offices, retail etc.) remain subdued whilst there is concern about the longer-term pipeline of public sector projects on account of the state’s financial position.

On the positive side, however, the state benefits from a massive build-out of data centre projects, a solid pipeline of educational and industrial work and a strong pipeline of energy related work in the civil sector.

In its recently released Australian Construction Market Report, Australian Construction Industry Forum forecast that the overall value of construction work done throughout Victoria will remain virtually unchanged across 2026 before returning to modest levels of growth from 2027 onward.

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