Defence Housing Australia

Procurement

Our approach to procuring goods and services, including consultancies, is consistent with and reflects the core policies and principles of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules.

We advertise tender opportunities via AusTender on a periodic basis for a range of goods and services. We also use AusTender to manage our tenders, including releasing tender opportunities, issuing addenda and receipt of tender submissions. Interested parties can register their details with AusTender to receive notifications about our tenders.

In accordance with one of the recommendations of the Forensic Review into DHA’s operations, we centralised procurement activities in 2016–17. The team assists with procurement processes to:

  • ensure policies and processes are adhered to
  • ensure procurement is undertaken in a consistent, fair, ethical and transparent manner
  • promote competition amongst suppliers and achieve value for money.

Senate Order on Entity Contracts

As a corporate Commonwealth entity, from 1 July 2017, DHA had to comply with the Senate Order on Entity Contracts and publish a list of contracts over $100,000 (GST inclusive) on our website for the previous year. Refer to our website to read the report.

Consultancy

We engage consultants as required when specialist expertise is not available in-house and the services are required for a defined period of time. In 2016–17, we entered into 382 new contracts worth $21.5 million.

The majority of contracts related to property provisioning and construction activities, including architectural design, town planning, quantity surveying, acoustic investigation, impact assessment (heritage, flora and fauna, etc.), social and cultural planning, legal services and graphic design services.

The remainder were for corporate related items such as taxation services, a review of our governance framework for development projects and independent reviews of our contact centre operations, facility management and subsidiary company.

More information on the use of advertising and market research services in 2016–17 is provided in Part 6 (Appendix D) of this report.