Opportunities

Status. Commonwealth approaches to market, planned procurement, standing offers and GrantConnect grant opportunities are loaded, and so are the state records each publisher has released.

Opportunities is sliced by what you are looking for, not by who published it. Its items are Open tenders, Coming up, Panels, Grants and Alerts. Open tenders, Coming up and Panels each hold every jurisdiction in one list, and a row of chips above the list narrows it to one — Commonwealth is one chip, each state another, and a chip outside your plan shows how many records are there and links to the plan that includes them. Every card still says what it is and where it was published: "Approach to market · AusTender" beside "Tender notice · Tenders WA", "Standing offer" beside "State scheme".

Opportunities holds the forward view. Approaches to market are open AusTender tenders, expressions of interest and requests for information, refreshed daily, each with its ATM number, buying entity, UNSPSC category and closing date — and, once enrichment is running, a plain-language summary, an ICT flag, a likely incumbent and a value band written at ingest. Coming up sits earlier still: Commonwealth entities publish an annual procurement plan of what they expect to go to market for, which is where incumbency is usually decided.

The other items cover the ways work reaches the market without a conventional tender. Coming up holds Commonwealth plan lines and the state forward plans together. Panels lists the Commonwealth's standing offers, one row per SON, beside the state standing schemes, because most Commonwealth ICT and services spend is bought through a standing offer and being off the panel means never seeing the work. Grants lists GrantConnect grant opportunities, and NSW's, split into Open, Ongoing and Closed. An ongoing round takes applications continuously and publishes no closing date, so it reads Ongoing wherever a closing date would be and is never called closing soon; each round carries the total funding published for it and, once they are made, the grant awards given under it. State and territory records are included from Pro up, and in the trial. The ACT also publishes the invoices it has paid, which are a tab of their own on Market intelligence › Contracts — never counted with its tenders, plans or awards.

The figures at the top

The Opportunities page opens with four figures, refreshed hourly. Each one opens the list behind it.

• Closing this week — open tenders closing before Sunday midnight, Sydney time, with how many close tomorrow. Opens Open tenders, closing soonest first.
• Published — tenders published in the last seven days, Commonwealth and states. Opens Open tenders, newest first.
• Open panels — standing offers and state schemes not yet expired, with how many close within 30 days. Opens Panels, expiring soonest first.
• Grant rounds open — open GrantConnect rounds and the funding they state. On plans with NSW, NSW's open rounds (and those opening soon) are added, and the line splits the two. Opens Grants.

State records count only for the states your plan includes. A dash means there is nothing to show yet, and the line under it says why.

Under the figures

The rest of the page is short lists, each with See all into the page it comes from.

• New for your alerts — your alerts, the ones with new matches first, each with how many are new and how often it emails you. Opens the alert's results. New alert opens Search, where you save one.
• Closing soon — open tenders closing in the next 14 days, Sydney time, grouped Today, Tomorrow, Next 7 days and Days 8–14, with the estimated value where one is published and the days left. Track adds the tender to your pipeline, exactly as Add to pipeline does on its page, and stays on the list; a tender you already chase reads Tracked and opens the bid.
• Followed agencies — open tenders from the agencies your team follows (see Government), soonest closing first, each with Track. While your team follows fewer than three it also suggests agencies to follow.
• Your categories — up to four UNSPSC categories: the ones your alerts narrow by, then the ones your team opens most. Each shows its Commonwealth contracts and their value in the last 90 days, and how many tenders are open in it. Opens the category. A team with no alert or opened record in a category sees Save a search instead.
• Coming up — the latest planned procurement, with the quarter the buyer expects to go to market.
• Panels expiring — open panels whose term ends in the next 30 days.
• Grant rounds closing — open grant rounds with a closing date, soonest first.

What the nightly enrichment adds

Every approach to market published today is read overnight, and four things are written against it for the morning. They are on the record page, and the ICT flag is on the cards too.

• A plain-language summary — the same two-to-four sentences you would get by opening the record, written before you open it.
• An ICT flag, with a reason. Yes or no, and one sentence saying why, so a flag you disagree with is an argument rather than a mystery. It is a label, not a filter: you cannot yet search on it, and it can be wrong — a notice published under an odd category, or one that buys a building and mentions its cabling.
• A likely incumbent. The contracts the same agency has already awarded whose titles look like this approach's, started in the last four years, best match first — each with the supplier, what the contract was worth, when it ends, and a link to the contract itself. This is title similarity against the contract record, not a prediction: a strong match usually is the incumbent, a possible one is worth opening, and no match at all means nothing at that agency looked similar enough to show you.
• A value band. What comparable contracts have been worth — the middle half of them, from the similar contracts above, or from this agency's contracts in the same category, or from every agency's, whichever has enough to say something. The page prints the basis and how many contracts are in it. It is not an estimate of this approach's value: AusTender publishes no estimate on an approach to market, and we do not invent one.

All four are written the night after a notice is published, so an approach that appeared this morning shows the summary and says the rest is coming. Nothing here is written while you read the page.

What you can do

• Filter open tenders by agency, source (AusTender, BuyICT, State) and BuyICT marketplace, and Commonwealth ones by UNSPSC category from a card's Category facet; sort them by closing date. There is no value-band or closing-window filter yet.
• See planned activity months before an ATM exists.
• Find the standing offers you could join, and when the window closes.
• Turn any of it into a bid, or keep it as an alert.