Small Business and Government Contracts - where do I start?

Posted 18 Nov '21

Small Business and Government Contracts - where do I start?

There are a significant number of major projects happening in our region. These projects provide great opportunities for our local businesses across many industries. Do you feel like you don’t know about opportunities, or you don’t know how to apply to be involved?

Nearly half of the NSW Governments procurement spend comes from small and medium businesses and they would like to see this increase. The NSW Government has developed resources to help small businesses acquire knowledge and skills to tender for NSW Government contracts and local government opportunities.

The NSW Small Business Commission and TAFE NSW have launched an online training program to help small business understand and navigate the tendering and contract processes. The training is free to registered small business, is completed online and on demand. The program has several modules that cover:

• Getting Business Ready
• Finding Opportunities
• Selling to Government
• Successfully Supplying

You can also download a Guide for Small Business designed to provide all the information and guidance on how to access the various opportunities to sell to the NSW Government as well as how to navigate prequalification and tendering processes. The Guide covers a range of topics to help you through the entire process, including:

• a Tender Readiness Checklist to help you assess if your business is ready to tender and what else you can do to prepare.
• How to find opportunities from tenders to over the counter and direct procurement and other opportunities.
• How to prepare and lodge a bid
• Managing contracts
• A glossary of term
• Examples

Industry Capability Network (ICN) NSW is a NSW Government funded not-for-profit organisation. Government-funded and private project owners list their projects with ICN. ICN Gateway helps connect suppliers to a range of projects and work packages in NSW and across Australia.

ICN consultants actively work with both project owners and suppliers behind the scenes to build the right procurement partnerships and refer businesses to other organisations when appropriate.

There may be some time and effort to get started with Government contracts, but it could open up a good pipeline of opportunities for your business.

With the opportunities available now across our region, take some time and consider if having the Government for a client is a good fit for your business, how it could impact on your current operations and plans for the future. If you decide this is a good fit, make use of the valuable resources available to help you through the process.

And, as always, contact your WDF Professional team member if you would like to discuss further how we can help you with your business. Our team can support you with decisions relation to your business and has a wealth of experience in business advisory services. Working to achieve great outcomes for our clients is what we aim to do. We want to help you to achieve your goals. Phone 02 6921 5444 or email accountants@wdf.com.au