This is an illustrative case study composed to demonstrate the TenderBuilt service process, methodology, and typical outcomes for civil construction SMEs navigating Victoria’s Local Jobs First Policy and Social Procurement Framework. The client, director, and contract details described are representative rather than identifying a specific engagement. Policy references, frameworks, and Victorian organisations cited are accurate and drawn from publicly available Victorian Government and Local Government Victoria documentation.
Where they started.
Central Highlands Concrete & Civil is a Ballarat-based contractor specialising in kerb and channel, concrete footpaths, pram ramps, vehicle crossings and minor concrete civil structures. Founded in 2016 by Director Renae Clarke, the business is women-led and majority-owned, employs 14 full-time staff plus seasonal labour at peak, and runs kerb extruding machines, agitator trucks, saws and small plant across the Central Highlands and Western Victoria.
Turnover sits at ~$4.2 million. The business had a strong technical reputation in private subdivision work and had been a specialist subcontractor on several Tier 1-delivered council projects in regional Victoria. Before TenderBuilt, however, it had never won a direct council contract — despite two serious attempts.
A 1-out-of-10 social procurement score.
Not poor tender writing in general — a specifically Victorian problem.
The company had strong technical content, solid evidence and a capable team. Over 18 months it had submitted two direct Victorian council tenders — both compliant, both technically sound, both unsuccessful. Written feedback on one — a $380,000 kerb and channel contract — revealed the decisive issue: the Social Procurement response scored 1 out of 10, and local content scored 3 out of 10. On a bid where non-price criteria carried 50% of the score, those two sections alone effectively eliminated the submission, despite competitive price and highly-rated capability. The reason was simple — no structured engagement with the Victorian frameworks that now govern council evaluation:
- No Local Jobs First literacy. Victoria’s Local Jobs First Policy requires local content percentages, local apprentice and trainee engagement, and a Local Industry Development Plan for qualifying projects.1 The team had no template, no structured commitments, no understanding of how LIDPs are scored.
- No Social Procurement Framework engagement. The Victorian SPF sets out seven priority social and sustainability outcomes.2 The company had no supplier relationships aligned to any of them.
- No Victorian Aboriginal supplier relationships. No agreements with businesses registered through Kinaway Chamber of Commerce — Victoria’s peak Aboriginal business chamber.3
- No Social Traders pathway. Social Traders is the leading certifier of Australian social enterprises, heavily referenced in the SPF.4 Central Highlands had no structured approach to social enterprise procurement.
The paradox: Central Highlands was, in many ways, the ideal supplier for a Victorian council social procurement response — women-led, regionally-based, locally-employing, apprentice-engaging. But none of that value was articulated in a way that maps to how evaluators score social procurement. The capability statement barely mentioned it.
A four-week rebuild.
A one-off Complex engagement for the City of Ballarat program — $450K over nine months.
| Week | Focus | Key outputs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tender deconstruction & Victorian framework mapping | Evaluation criteria matrix, LJF threshold assessment, SPF outcome mapping, bid/no-bid confirmation |
| 2 | Capability & methodology rebuild | Women-led ownership narrative, past-project evidence library, Ballarat-specific methodology, heritage & CBD traffic considerations |
| 3 | Local Jobs First & Social Procurement response | Local content schedule, Kinaway supplier partnership, Social Traders engagement, apprentice commitments, SPF outcome commitments |
| 4 | Pricing support, QA & lodgement | Price submission support, full compliance audit, referee briefings, Buying for Victoria lodgement |
Local Jobs First & Social Procurement as a scoring lever.
Week 3 — the single highest-leverage part of the engagement.
For a Victorian council contract of this size and type, Local Jobs First and Social Procurement responses aren’t optional boxes — they’re weighted criteria that routinely decide the outcome between technically-comparable tenderers. The approach was not an aspirational narrative but real, quantified, reportable commitments:
- Local content schedule. Quantified commitments — 88% Victorian labour, 82% Victorian materials (Victorian cement, regional aggregate, Victorian reinforcing steel), 100% Victorian subcontractor engagement — each backed by a named supplier or category, not a generic statement.
- Kinaway Chamber of Commerce partnership. A supply relationship with a Kinaway-registered Victorian Aboriginal-owned business for selected equipment hire and consumables,3 with an MOU committing a minimum 2.5% spend by value across the term.
- Social Traders engagement. Registered as a buyer through Social Traders, committing a minimum 2% of consumable spend (PPE, signage, uniforms) through certified social enterprises.4
- Apprenticeship & local training. One additional local civil construction apprentice through the Ballarat Group Training network during the term, aligned with the intent of the Major Projects Skills Guarantee and its council-level equivalents.5
- Mapping to the seven SPF outcomes. Each section explicitly mapped to the relevant SPF outcome — Opportunities for Victorian Aboriginal people, Women’s equality and safety (leveraging the women-led ownership), and Sustainable Victorian social enterprise and Aboriginal business sectors.2
- Reportable, measurable KPIs. Every commitment structured with quarterly reporting, named accountabilities and evidence capture — presented as operational from day one, not aspirational.
“Before TenderBuilt, we had no Aboriginal business relationships, no Social Traders registration, no structured local content strategy. They connected us with Kinaway, set up our Social Traders access, and built a local content plan that scored 9.1 out of 10 on the day. That single piece of work opened the direct Victorian council market for us.”
Rebuilding capability & methodology.
The parallel Week 2 workstream rebuilt capability and methodology to the same standard. The capability statement had barely mentioned the women-led ownership, the Victorian workforce or the regional supply chain — precisely the attributes that drive social procurement scoring. These were moved to the foreground with verifiable evidence: workforce demographic data, regional supplier invoicing history, apprentice enrolment records, and past social procurement outcomes from subcontract work.
The methodology was site-specific for Ballarat. Traffic management was structured for CBD conditions — Sturt Street, Lydiard Street and surrounds carry significant pedestrian and vehicle movement, and the historic streetscapes demand careful attention to heritage-listed kerbing and bluestone elements in several CBD blocks. Sequencing aligned to a realistic program with dependencies on wet-weather windows, concrete supply, and coordination with adjacent council programs.
“Our capability statement barely mentioned our social or community outcomes — and that’s what Victorian councils now evaluate heavily. They rewrote it to foreground our local workforce, our regional supply chain, our women-led ownership. Our technical capability finally sounded as strong on paper as it is in the field.”
Win, scores, and a new forward pipeline.
Central Highlands was awarded the City of Ballarat contract ~seven weeks after close. Written feedback confirmed the non-price scoring shift:
| Criterion | Baseline (prior bid) | This submission |
|---|---|---|
| Social Procurement Framework | 1 / 10 | 8.8 / 10 |
| Local Jobs First / Local Content | 3 / 10 | 9.1 / 10 |
| Capability & Experience | ~6.5 / 10 | 8.4 / 10 |
| Methodology | ~6 / 10 | 8.5 / 10 |
| Overall non-price | ~4.5 / 10 | 8.6 / 10 |
Central Highlands won over two other shortlisted tenderers — one marginally lower on price — because the combined non-price lift offset a modest price premium under the weighted model. Contract value: $450,000 over a nine-month program.
The downstream effect was material. Within four months of award, the Kinaway relationship and Social Traders registration had been leveraged into two further Victorian council submissions — City of Greater Bendigo and Moorabool Shire — both scoring competitively on social procurement where the company would previously have scored poorly. The direct council channel moved from effectively zero to ~40% of forward pipeline within six months.
The City of Ballarat contract was $450K — but the bigger outcome is that 40% of our forward pipeline is now direct Victorian council work. We’re confident bidding on any Victorian council tender because we’ve got the social procurement and local jobs infrastructure to back it up. We used to avoid direct council bids because we kept losing them for reasons we didn’t understand. Now we understand exactly how they’re scored, and we’re winning them.
What this means for civil SMEs.
Victoria’s procurement landscape is distinct from every other jurisdiction. The combined effect of Local Jobs First and the Social Procurement Framework is that non-price, non-technical criteria — local content, Victorian workforce participation, and social and sustainable procurement outcomes — now routinely decide Victorian council and government tenders. A technically excellent, price-competitive contractor with weak LJF and SPF responses will lose. A moderately-priced contractor with strong ones can win.
For civil SMEs outside Victoria, the pattern is increasingly replicated — NSW’s Aboriginal Procurement and APIC policies, Queensland’s QPP 2026, and South Australia’s frameworks all push evaluation in the same direction.6 The SMEs that take market share over the next decade are the ones investing now in real supplier relationships, real apprenticeship commitments and real local content quantification — then articulating those investments in the specific language evaluators are required to score against.
Losing on Local Jobs First or Social Procurement scores?
We work with civil SMEs bidding across Victoria to build genuine Local Jobs First and Social Procurement Framework responses — real supplier partnerships, real commitments, real quantified reporting — that score in the competitive range. If you’ve been scoring below 5 out of 10 on these criteria, that’s almost always where the contract is being lost.
Book a free social procurement strategy call- Local Jobs First Victoria, Local Jobs First Policy, October 2022.
- Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance, Victoria’s Social Procurement Framework. dtf.vic.gov.au
- Kinaway Chamber of Commerce Victoria, Victorian Aboriginal Business Directory. kinaway.com.au
- Social Traders, Certified Australian Social Enterprises. socialtraders.com.au
- Victorian Government, Major Projects Skills Guarantee.
- Aurora Marketing, Behind Closed Doors, 2023. auroramarketing.com.au
- Victorian Government, Buying for Victoria — eProcurement Platform. buyingfor.vic.gov.au