Week of 26 February 2026

The Australian Submarine Agency has dropped a $50 million tender for a four-year NDT traineeship program. They want 60 trainees trained up with ISO-9712 certification - that's the international standard for non-destructive testing. Staggered intake starting with 5 in the first year, scaling to 20 by the final year.

This is AUKUS workforce planning in action. You can't build nuclear submarines if you don't have people who can inspect the welds. Closes 16 Feb.

Meanwhile, Defence has put out an RFI for sovereign UAS capability - they're specifically looking at Australian SMEs for "disposable and attritable" drone platforms. No value listed, but the intent is clear: they don't want to be dependent on overseas suppliers for certain drone categories. Closes 13 Feb.

Two very different capability gaps, same underlying message.

Federal money is moving to some interesting places:

• Christmas Island: Stormwater and rockfall mitigation at Flying Fish Cove ($35M)
• Norfolk Island: Kingston Pier rock revetment remediation ($5M)
• Uluru-Kata Tjuta: Cleaning services contract ($1.5M)

And then there's Mutitjulu.

This one's worth pausing on. The Director of National Parks wants a comprehensive infrastructure upgrade for the Mutitjulu community - that's the Indigenous community inside Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. We're talking power, water, and sewer network upgrades, plus a 1MW solar array and 3MW.hr battery storage system. They're also building twelve-bed contractor accommodation, which tells you something about the logistics of actually delivering this work.

$50 million, closes 12 March, and genuinely complex. You're coordinating essential services upgrades with renewable energy installation in one of the most remote locations in the country, working within a national park, with a First Nations community. The evaluation criteria weight heavily toward demonstrated experience in similar environments.

This is exactly the kind of tender where preparation matters — see what our Bid Accelerator looks like for this one.

If you do remote/regional work and can handle the logistics, there's activity across all of these.

The $80 million Timor-Leste private sector development program closes today. Ten years of DFAT work focused on agriculture and tourism - significant aid programming if you're in that space.

Also today: Defence Housing needs heritage facade work at Anglesea Barracks ($2M), asbestos low-level exposure research ($200K), an HPLC system for sports drug testing ($500K), and the Future Fund needs airport transfer services ($2M).

If any of these are yours, hope you've already submitted.

Yes, the ATO's $1 billion Interactions Centre Solution is still out there. Complete contact centre replacement by December 2028 - voice, chat, virtual assistants, the lot. IRAP certification to PROTECTED, hosted in Australia. About a month left, which for something this size isn't actually that long.

AMSA wants dedicated fixed wing SAR services covering Australia's 53 million square kilometre search and rescue region. $600 million RFI. It's early stage, but if you operate aircraft for this kind of work, this is the one to shape. Closes mid-March.

The $800 million Mulwala/Benalla facility redevelopment closes on the 25th. Managing contractor for the whole thing.

But there's a stack of $10M DSRG work that's more accessible: Singleton Training Area facilities (closes Tuesday), Woomera building refurb (Tuesday), RAAF Townsville roof replacement (9 days), Russell Precinct upgrades in Canberra (22 days), multiple HMAS Stirling works in WA.

Defence construction remains busy at every scale.

Here's one that matters beyond the dollar value: $100 million for Aboriginal water entitlements purchasing. The Department of Climate Change wants to buy up to 15 gigalitres of surface water rights across NSW Border Rivers, QLD Border Rivers, Barwon Darling, and Namoi catchments.

This is the government actively acquiring water rights for First Nations communities. Closes 27 Feb.

• PFAS biomonitoring: CDC wants a pilot study on chemical exposure in the population ($2M, closes 25 Feb)
• Coral restoration: AIMS still needs someone to design a device that deploys one million coral reseeding units from vessels ($2M, closes Thursday)
• NDIS staff wellbeing: Embedded mental health services for ~1,000 staff exposed to vicarious trauma (closes 16 Feb)
• Health enterprise computing: $200M multi-vendor environment tender (closes early March)

Sovereignty is the theme this week. Submarine workforce, drone manufacturing, water rights, remote infrastructure. The government is spending money on things it wants to own and control domestically.

Defence infrastructure remains the volume leader. But the interesting story is in capability building.