Work in this town is not awarded the way most people assume. These briefings set out what the rules actually say, with the source named every time, so you can check it yourself rather than take our word for it.
Why we publish this. The honest answer to "why would work come to me" is not a promise, it is a rule. Most of what makes a small local firm competitive for public work is already written into the procurement rules, free to use, and almost nobody in town is using it. We would rather hand that over than keep it.
NT procurement rules weight local content at a minimum of 30 per cent of the score, and cap price at a maximum of 30 per cent. Being the cheapest can win you at most 30 out of 100. Here is what the rules actually say, what counts as a Territory enterprise, where the $200,000 line sits, and the joint venture route that lets two small firms reach a job neither could win alone.
Read the briefing →Alice Springs runs at about 1.7 per cent unemployment with 388 construction businesses, but only eleven have twenty or more staff. So the shortage is coordination, not tradespeople. What the record says about why buying groups fail, why it is almost always capital rather than buying power, and the competition-law line that no arrangement can cross.
Read the briefing →The point of the Hub is that a customer can find every trade in one place, while every business on it stays its own business, with its own brand, its own prices and its own customers.
See what a listing involves →