What we are right for, and what we are not.

Jurisdiction

Where we work.

Our South Australian and Victorian registrations carry a two-storey scope for building work undertaken under those registrations. Fitout, refurbishment and defit within an existing building, and commercial work in New South Wales, are assessed against the licensing pathway that applies to that particular project. We confirm that pathway in writing before we bid, rather than after.

Fit

What we are built for.

• Technically demanding facilities. Laboratories and testing facilities, dangerous goods storage, and buildings where the services, the compliance pathway and the interfaces are the difficult part rather than the form.
• Industrial and warehouse. Services-heavy industrial work, refurbishment and upgrade in operating facilities.
• Commercial fitout, refurbishment and defit. Office and workplace, including staged work and make-good against lease obligations.
• Design and construct, and early involvement. We are most useful before the design is fixed. If you already have a fully coordinated set and want a price, we can do that too — but it is not where we add the most.

These show the building types we are built for. Project names and clients are published only where the client has agreed to it.

Honesty

What we are not right for.

• New South Wales residential building work. We do not hold the licensing for it and do not take it on.
• Projects with no client-side decision-maker. Our process asks the client to make specific decisions at specific points. Where nobody is empowered to make them, programmes slip and neither of us enjoys it.

Evaluation

Price is scored. It is not the only thing scored.

The cheapest bid that fails on site costs more than the difference it saved.

Every trade package is assessed against allocated criteria rather than compared on a single number. Price is one of them and it carries real weight. So do quality of the offer, relevant experience on comparable work, demonstrated safety performance, and the capacity to actually resource the package on our programme.

That is why we tender to the open market and level every bid to a common scope before anything is compared. A levelled comparison is what makes a weighted assessment possible; without it you are only comparing exclusions.

We ask to be evaluated the same way we evaluate. Where a client scores tenders on quality, experience, safety and delivery capability alongside price, we are competitive and we are comfortable. Our reputation, and the experience a client actually has on site, is built out of the parts of the decision that are not the number.

This is our standing method. It is set out in our Sustainable Procurement Policy, and it applies to every package on every project, not to a favoured few.

Design teams

How we work with design teams.

We would rather be the contractor an architect recommends again than the one they tolerate.

In practice that means value management happens inside the design stage with the design team present, and no substitution is procured without written confirmation from the design team.

Consultants are paid, on time, for the work they are engaged to do. A design team that is chasing its own fees is not going to give a builder its best thinking.

Scale

Project size.

We deliver commercial and industrial projects up to $20 million.

The method is the same at every point in that range — trade packages to the open market, every bid levelled to a common scope before it is compared, and a preconstruction phase that is funded rather than absorbed. If you want to know how we work, see why JCGAU.