How to get government work as a subcontractor

Who wins the big contracts

Government doesn't usually buy cleaning, grounds care and building repairs one trade at a time. Agencies and councils often bundle the work into a few large contracts: facilities management across a group of buildings, construction head contracts for new buildings and upgrades, and maintenance contracts for housing, parks and other assets. The firms that win them tend to be big enough to carry the risk and the paperwork, and much of the actual work is then done by smaller subcontractors. That's where a local cleaner, electrician or painter fits.

Two of our guides cover the firms themselves: what facilities managers look for in a contractor and how to get on a builder's subcontractor list. This one covers the government side: finding out who holds a contract, why the rules give head contractors a reason to want you and how you get paid.

Find out who holds the contract

Government has to say who it has given its contracts to, and those notices are the best list of head contractors you'll find. Each level of government publishes them in a different place and above a different value.

Search the notices for your kind of work in your area and note the supplier, the start date and the end date. A fresh award is your cue to write to the winner straight away, because they're setting up the contract and filling gaps in their supplier list. An end date a year or so away tells you a re-tender is coming, and the firms bidding for it will be lining up subcontractors before they lodge. The NSW Small Business Commissioner recommends exactly this: go through the contract award notices and contact the businesses you could subcontract to.

Approach the person who runs the contract

At a facilities management firm the right person is usually the contract or account manager for that client, or the regional manager who looks after its sites. At a builder it's the estimator while the job is being priced and the project or contracts team once it's won. Write to one person and name the contract you saw. Say which part of it you could do and from where, and mention that your documents are ready. A made-up example from an electrician in Townsville:

Hi Mel, I saw your firm was awarded the facilities maintenance contract for the department's Townsville and Ingham sites. I run a five-person electrical business in Garbutt, and we do emergency lighting, test and tag and reactive repairs for commercial buildings across the region. Our licence, insurance and safe work method statements are current, and all five of us live in Townsville. If you're building the subcontractor list for that contract I'd like to be considered. Who should I talk to about getting set up?

Ben

If you're writing ahead of a re-tender, offer your rates or a short capability statement that the bidder can use in its response. Our capability statement template is a quick start.

What the head contractor will ask for

Expect the same paperwork any commercial client wants: your ABN, licence, certificates of currency, safety system and safe work method statements, references and often an online prequalification. Our guide to insurance and licences business clients ask for covers that folder. Government work adds three things on top.

The first is the head contract's terms, which get passed down to you. Queensland's procurement policy says that where agencies ask suppliers to pass contract terms through to subcontractors, those terms should reflect the subcontractor's scope rather than the entire agreement. If you're handed the whole head contract for a small slice of the work, it's fair to ask for terms that match what you'll actually do.

The second is a code of conduct. Queensland's standard invitation makes following the Queensland Government Supplier Code of Conduct a mandatory criterion, and the NSW Supplier Code of Conduct requires suppliers to make sure the businesses acting on their behalf comply with it as well. Read whichever one applies, because you may be asked to sign up to it.

The third is evidence of who you are, since the head contractor has to report on it. Be ready to give your headcount, where your staff live, how many apprentices you employ and if the business is Aboriginal-owned. In NSW it also pays to register on Supplier Hub and identify as a small business, because one of the payment rules below applies to subcontractors identified that way on buy.nsw.

Why head contractors look for local and small subcontractors

Queensland

The Queensland Procurement Policy 2026 (version 1.1, in force since 1 January 2026) applies to state agencies, not councils. For significant procurements, which no agency can define as anything below $500,000 including GST, the evaluation must include a purposeful public procurement criterion worth 10 to 20% of the total. It's built from two to four outcomes worth 5 to 10% each. They include local benefits (such as local workforces and local suppliers in the supply chain), more spend with small and family businesses and medium enterprises, and commitments to apprentices and trainees. A local supplier is a Queensland supplier whose workforce lives within 250 km of its place of business.

The policy also asks agencies to consider how lead suppliers could be required to bring local and small businesses into their supply chain and report back. Contracts must include the specific commitments a supplier made in its offer. So a bidder that names local subcontractors in its response is promising to use them, and the government measures the number and value of Queensland SMEs engaged as subcontractors on projects under the Queensland Charter for Local Content.

New South Wales

The NSW Procurement Policy Framework (August 2026) also applies to state agencies. On goods and services contracts of $3 million or more, agencies must give at least 10% of the evaluation to SME participation and require bidders to submit an SME and local participation plan, which the winner reports against every quarter. From $7.5 million, contracts must include a minimum of 1.5% Aboriginal participation backed by an Aboriginal participation plan. On projects budgeted at $7.5 million or more excluding GST, agencies also have to explain why a local supplier wasn't chosen if one was available. On construction contracts between $10 million and $100 million, 20% of the trades workforce must be apprentices. Each of those targets is easier for a head contractor to hit with local, small subcontractors who can show their numbers.

Getting paid

Our builder's subcontractor list guide sets out how payment claims, schedules and retention work under each state's security of payment law. These are the parts that matter most on government jobs.

Queensland: project trusts

Under the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (in force from 28 April 2026), a head contract needs a project trust when more than half its price is building work of the kind the Act lists and the price passes a threshold. Excluding GST, that threshold is $1 million where the client is the State or a hospital and health service, and $10 million for state authorities, councils and private clients. A first-tier subcontractor doing trade work on that contract is a beneficiary of the trust for the money it's owed. Cash retention the head contractor holds back from a first-tier subcontractor on such a contract has to go into a retention trust. In practice a $2 million fit-out for a state department has a trust behind it and a $5 million council job doesn't, so ask the head contractor at the start if yours does. These thresholds have changed before, so check the current position with the QBCC.

New South Wales: security of payment and the 20-day rule

For non-residential construction work, Building Commission NSW says a head contractor must pay a subcontractor within 20 business days of a payment claim, and retention held on projects over $20 million has to sit in a trust account with a ledger sent to you at least every three months. The framework also tells agencies to check head contractors' claims about what they've paid their subcontractors.

Goods and services contracts fall under the Small Business Shorter Payment Terms Policy instead. On NSW Government contracts of $7.5 million or more, a large head contractor (200 or more full-time equivalent staff, or one that reports under the Commonwealth payment times scheme) must pay small business subcontractors within 20 business days of a correctly rendered invoice. It has to tell you the policy applies and put the term in your subcontract. If you aren't paid on time, raise it with the head contractor first, then ask the NSW Small Business Commissioner for mediation, then take it to the agency.

Where to start

Pick the two or three contracts near you that include your trade, find out who holds them and write to the person who runs each one. Finding those people and writing to each of them is the slow part, and Curlew does it by email in your business name if you'd rather spend the time on the work. Our page on facilities managers is a good place to see who else buys from businesses like yours.