Australia’s construction tender market is becoming increasingly uneven, with Victoria emerging as the country’s dominant procurement engine while New South Wales risks being perceived as a larger but less transparent market.

That is the central conclusion of a new quarterly analysis by E1, which compares tender activity, procurement intensity, ownership mix and sector exposure across Australia’s major state markets for the first quarter of 2026.

The report argues that sheer project volume no longer tells the full story. Instead, the states attracting the greatest contractor attention are those generating the highest concentration of visible tender opportunities — particularly in publicly funded work.

Victoria led the country on nearly every major metric. The state recorded 1,612 tenders during the quarter, ahead of New South Wales on 1,514 and Queensland on 1,382. More importantly, Victoria also produced the highest “tender intensity” — a measure of tenders per project — at 1.78, well above NSW’s 1.33.

That distinction matters because it points to a more active procurement environment rather than simply a larger development base. While NSW retained the country’s biggest project pipeline with 1,137 projects, the report suggests much of that activity remains tied to private-sector work, limiting overall public tender visibility.

Victoria’s edge was especially pronounced in government-linked procurement. More than 81% of tenders in the state were classified as public, the highest share nationally. Queensland followed at 74.6%, while NSW stood out as the most privately weighted market, with private-sector work accounting for more than a third of tender activity.

The divergence between Queensland and NSW was one of the report’s more striking findings. Despite NSW’s larger overall project base, Queensland generated more public tenders in absolute terms — 1,031 compared with NSW’s 957 — underlining the growing importance of state-backed infrastructure and institutional work in Brisbane and regional Queensland.

The analysis also points to a deepening mid-market construction pipeline across the eastern seaboard. Projects valued between A$1mn and A$5mn represented the largest segment in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, suggesting sustained activity in education, civic and commercial developments rather than a market driven purely by megaprojects.

By contrast, South Australia and Western Australia showed a heavier concentration of sub-A$1mn projects, reinforcing their profile as smaller but more specialised procurement markets.

Sector composition varied sharply between jurisdictions. Victoria and Queensland were strongly weighted towards education projects, while NSW and South Australia leant more heavily into commercial work. Western Australia distinguished itself through a relatively high concentration of government and refurbishment activity, reflecting the state’s ongoing institutional and civic upgrade programmes.

E1 ultimately ranked Victoria as the strongest all-round state for tendering, citing its combination of procurement intensity, public-sector visibility and project depth. Queensland placed second as what the report called the “strongest alternative major market”, while NSW ranked third despite retaining the nation’s largest project base.

The broader implication is that Australia’s construction economy is fragmenting into distinct state-level procurement ecosystems. For contractors and suppliers, market attractiveness increasingly depends less on headline development numbers and more on where governments are actively bringing projects to market.

In that environment, Victoria’s advantage may not simply be scale. It is visibility.

The above is a synopsis of the recently released EI report: Which State is Strongest for Tendering?

Image: Envato

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