Contract award obligations

Debrief unsuccessful tenderers

You should debrief unsuccessful suppliers after you finish a tender and award a contract.

This will enable them to improve their capabilities and therefore increase their chances for future tenders.

In some circumstances, you must carry out a post-tender debrief. This includes:

• tenderers who were unsuccessful for a covered procurement tender process, and
• where an Aboriginal business, small to medium enterprise (SME) or regional supplier reasonably requests a debrief.

Hedge foreign exchange risks

Where there’s an overseas element to any contract there’s likely to also be foreign exchange (FX) risk.

If currency movements could impact the contract, you should consult with NSW Treasury and TCorp on how to manage them.

If you have a known exposure of more than A$500,000, you must hedge any FX risks within 3 business days of committing to the contract.

Encourage Aboriginal participation

After you award a contract valued at $7.5 million or more (this includes goods and services and construction procurement), the Aboriginal Procurement Policy 2021 (APP) requires that you must require the successful supplier to provide a final Aboriginal Participation Plan.

The completed Aboriginal participation plan forms the basis for you to monitor a supplier’s Aboriginal participation commitments.

Successful suppliers must report on how they're meeting the Aboriginal participation plan each quarter.

Address additional obligations for construction contracts

You have some additional obligations after awarding a construction contract.

Work Health and Safety (WHS) responsibilities

Before work begins on a construction project, you must make sure the principal construction contractor provides you with:

• a WHS Management Plan
• agree an audit schedule of the WHS Management Plan, for contracts valued over $1 million.

You must review the plan to make sure it complies with the WHS Management Systems and Auditing Guidelines PDF, 252.81 KB.

Environmental management responsibilities

Before work begins, you must require successful suppliers to prepare and implement an appropriate site-specific Environmental Management Plan.

Quality management responsibilities

Before work begins or before you accept a product, you must make sure successful service providers supply you with:

• a Quality management plan or Inspection and test plan, and
• any relevant product certifications.

You should base what you require on the contract’s value and risk profile.

Bid cost contributions

Sometimes you may decide you’ll offer bid costs to unsuccessful suppliers for construction or infrastructure contracts.

However, you must only pay a contribution if:

• the contract is valued over $100 million
• the supplier’s bid showed it was genuinely attempting to fully satisfy the request for tender’s intent
• the supplier agrees to give you any intellectual property rights you reasonably request.

You can pay up to 50% of the estimated bid costs included in the final business case.

You should identify the need and rationale for a bid cost contribution in the final business case, and the proposed contribution should be included in the total project funding envelope presented to the Expenditure Review Committee (ERC) or Cabinet. ERC or Cabinet must approve the bid contribution prior to you commencing the procurement process.

You should seek NSW Treasury’s agreement that you have met the conditions of the Bid Cost Contributions Policy before releasing an expression of interest.

If you decide to increase the bid cost contribution after approving the final business case, you’ll need to pay the extra cost from project contingencies or existing agency resources. Otherwise, Cabinet or ERC must consider any request for extra funds.