Why this tender: a five-part council security bundle is the most common shape of opportunity a NSW security business will face. This teardown shows how we read one: the compliance gate, the traps in the addenda, and the evaluation criteria as an evaluator scores them. Wombid had no involvement in this tender. Everything below comes from the published RFT package.
- Buyer
- Blacktown City Council
- RFT number
- C6/2025
- Closing date
- 23 April 2025, 3:00 pm
- Contract term
- 3 years fixed, plus 2 x 1 year extensions
- Evaluation criteria
- 9
- Returnable schedules
- 17
- Licence gates
- NSW Master Security Licence with the relevant sub-class for each part bid, plus staff NSW Security Licence Class 1 or Class 2
1. The tender at a glance
- BUYER
- Blacktown City Council, a local authority under the Local Government Act 1993 (NSW) and, in its own words, one of the largest councils in Australia
- REFERENCE
- RFT C6/2025, Security Services, lodged via the buy.nsw Tenders module
- SCOPE
- Five parts: A manpower (site security, crowd control, events), B cash in transit, C mobile patrols and alarm response, D electronic security (servicing, monitoring, repairs), E locksmith services
- TERM
- 3 years fixed, plus 2 x 1 year extensions at council discretion
- CONTRACT FORM
- Schedule of rates, with fee adjustment per the Services Agreement
- AWARD STRUCTURE
- Council reserved the right to appoint a panel or a single contractor, in any combination, and to accept any tender in part or in whole
- KEY DATES
- Published 25 March 2025. Closed 23 April 2025, 3:00 pm. Estimated decision 5 September 2025
The single most important structural fact: respondents could bid one part, several parts, or all five. A guarding and patrols specialist did not need locksmith or electronic security capability to win real work here. Many capable firms no-bid tenders like this because the full bundle looks out of reach. The document itself said otherwise.
2. The compliance gate: what kills a bid before scoring starts
These were binary. Miss any one and the council could set the response aside as non-conforming, at its absolute discretion, before a single criterion was scored.
- NSW Master Security Licence with the relevant sub-class for each part bid, and staff holding NSW Security Licence Class 1 or Class 2 relevant to the service, with documentary evidence provided during evaluation.
- All seventeen returnable schedules completed, from corporate information through financial capacity, insurance, experience, referees, CSR, sustainability, EEO, WHS and modern slavery, plus the pricing annexure.
- Pricing submitted in both PDF and Excel. If the two versions disagreed, the PDF prevailed. A spreadsheet edited at 11 pm and exported carelessly could quietly overwrite the price you thought you offered.
- Zero or blank prices were not permitted. Each had to read included or excluded, with an explanation and cost breakdown, and the council was not obliged to accept offers leaning on them.
- Schedule 17 required formal acknowledgement of every addendum. Not reading the addenda was therefore not just risky, it was declarable.
- Conduct gates applied too: canvassing an elected council member or officer meant disqualification.
None of this measures whether a firm is good at security. It measures whether the bid was administered properly. This is where a large share of real-world losses happen, and it is fully controllable.
3. The addenda: where bids quietly die
Two addenda landed in the final thirteen days before close, and both changed the submission itself, not just the background reading.
- Addendum 1 (10 April) replaced the pricing schedule with Revision 1 and added duties for two sites. It also corrected a ghost reference: a WHS form named in the package did not exist and had to be formally omitted.
- Addendum 2 (17 April) replaced the pricing schedule again. Responses had to be submitted on Revision 2. It also changed a service timeline for one site to 16:00 through 07:30, which alters the labour cost base of that pay item: night rates, not day rates.
A respondent who priced on the original schedule, or even on Revision 1, submitted a non-conforming price six days before close without knowing it. Addenda are not correspondence. They are scope and price changes with non-conformance consequences, and tracking them is part of the job.
4. The evaluation criteria, read as an evaluator reads them
Nine criteria, listed without weightings and, in the council's words, not necessarily in order of importance:
- Price (full cost), relevant experience, capability, management skills and qualifications, quality management, financials, work health and safety, social and community, and equal opportunity and fair employment.
What unweighted criteria mean in practice
When a buyer publishes weightings, you can rationally concentrate effort. When it does not, every criterion can move the result, so a thin answer anywhere donates points to whoever wrote a complete one. Four of the nine criteria here are non-technical: quality management, WHS, social and community, and EEO. These are exactly the sections capable operators under-invest in, because they feel like paperwork rather than security. On an unweighted scoresheet they are worth as much as the sections you are proud of.
Price meant full cost, not headline rates
The criterion is price as full cost under a schedule of rates across a possible five-year term, with a fee adjustment mechanism in the agreement. Evaluators compare complete, internally consistent pricing. The included and excluded rule above exists precisely to expose offers that look cheap by leaving things out.
Local preference was real and evidence-based
Blacktown ran an explicit buy-local policy in this evaluation. Eligibility was documentary: a principal or branch address in the local or regional area, proven by a utility-grade postal letter from the last three months, not a residential address, plus a stated contribution to the local economy. A Western Sydney firm that ticked the box without attaching the evidence earned nothing for being local.
5. How our Bid Gate reads a tender like this
Every opportunity Wombid watches gets a written go or no-bid verdict before any effort is spent, built on five tests. Applied to C6/2025, as a demonstration of method rather than hindsight:
Binary. Master Security Licence sub-classes for the parts bid, staff licences, insurances, every schedule returnable. Any single fail and the verdict is no-bid, stated plainly.
The seventeen schedules map directly onto the nine criteria. A firm with no written WHS system, quality management material or EEO position starts the race behind, whatever its operational record. Coverage is measured before bidding, not discovered after losing.
A multi-part bundle at one of the state's largest councils draws both national providers and local specialists. The panel discretion matters: it lowers the bar from beating everyone on everything to being credible on one part.
A 3 plus 2 year schedule-of-rates term rewards firms that can price escalation and after-hours work properly. The Addendum 2 timeline change is exactly the kind of detail that decides whether a contract is profitable.
No briefing and no site visit were offered, so there was no relationship channel in the process. Positioning ran entirely through the written response. That favours preparation over incumbency.
The shape of the verdict: for a licensed guarding and patrols business in Western Sydney with a working WHS system, Parts A and C read as a genuine go, priced carefully against the addenda. Parts D and E read as no-bid without in-house electronic security or locksmith capability. The point of the Gate is that this call is made in writing, with reasoning, before nights and weekends are spent, and because Wombid works on retainer rather than per bid, we earn nothing by talking a client into a doomed one.
6. Three things to take into your next tender
- Read the addenda as scope and price changes, and submit on the latest revision of every document. Tenders are lost on housekeeping more often than on capability.
- Treat the soft criteria as scored sections, because they are. Quality management, WHS, social and community, and EEO answers are worth real points on an unweighted scoresheet.
- Check the award structure before you no-bid. Part-by-part and panel discretion clauses regularly make big tenders accessible to specialist SMEs.