How public bodies contract for research they cannot specify in advance
Research procurement has a structural problem: the buyer is purchasing an answer to a question, and if the answer were known the contract would be unnecessary. Public bodies deal with this by buying in phases. A feasibility or concept phase is awarded to several suppliers in parallel, each paid a modest fixed sum; a subset is then funded to prototype; a smaller subset again reaches demonstration. Each phase is a competition among the survivors of the last, so a bidder should read the notice for the phase structure and the progression criteria before pricing anything.
Intellectual property is the term that decides whether the contract is worth winning. Arrangements range from full assignment of results to the buyer, through a licence to the buyer with the supplier retaining ownership and the right to commercialise elsewhere, to background and foreground IP splits that must be catalogued before work starts. Development-focused schemes often deliberately leave ownership with the supplier so that a market can form around the result, while procurement of research for internal use tends toward assignment. The two produce very different bid economics.
Evaluation weights the proposal's scientific and technical merit, the team's record, and the credibility of the risk assessment, and it rewards candour about what might fail. Deliverables are reports, data and demonstrations rather than products, so acceptance criteria are written around defined technical readiness levels or measurable milestones. Where human participants, animals, personal data or dual-use technology are involved, ethical approval and export control clearance are conditions precedent with their own timetables, and they are a common cause of a project starting months after award.
This section describes how this category is bought generally, across the public buyers that publish it. The figures elsewhere on this page are measured for this market alone.
Who buys research & development in Australia?
GlobalGov holds 13,059 research & development records from 140 distinct buying organisations in Australia. The most frequent publishers are Department Of Defence (5,280 records); Department Of Industry, Science And Resources (713 records); Australian Centre For International Agricultural Research (636 records); Department Of Health And Aged Care (405 records); Department Of Agriculture, Fisheries And Forestry (389 records); Csiro (367 records). Between them the 6 largest account for 60% of everything published, so buying here is concentrated in a few authorities.
| Buying organisation | Records | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Department Of Defence | 5,280 | 40% |
| Department Of Industry, Science And Resources | 713 | 5.5% |
| Australian Centre For International Agricultural Research | 636 | 4.9% |
| Department Of Health And Aged Care | 405 | 3.1% |
| Department Of Agriculture, Fisheries And Forestry | 389 | 3.0% |
| Csiro | 367 | 2.8% |
What are research & development contracts worth in Australia?
13,052 of the 13,059 records publish a contract value. The median is $51,427 and the largest single published value is $551.2M. By size, 8,494 under $100k, 3,914 between $100k and $1M, 618 between $1M and $10M, 26 above $10M. The remaining 7 publish no value at all, so every figure here describes the priced subset only, and values are as stated by the buyer rather than as finally awarded.
| Contract size | Records | Share of priced |
|---|---|---|
| under $100k | 8,494 | 65% |
| between $100k and $1M | 3,914 | 30% |
| between $1M and $10M | 618 | 4.7% |
| above $10M | 26 | 0.2% |
How long do bidders get to respond to research & development tenders in Australia?
Across the 6 Australia research & development notices that publish both a publication date and a closing date, the median response window is 54 days. A quarter of them allowed 54 days or fewer and a quarter stayed open for more than 54. Not one of them closed within a fortnight of being published, so the window on this market is consistently workable.
How often are research & development tenders published in Australia?
Australia publishes about 42 notices a month in this category, 507 in the last twelve months. Volume is steady against the 501 published in the twelve months before that. Over the last three years there were 1,303, spread across 166 separate months of activity since 31 January 2012. April is historically the busiest month. The most recent was published 4 September 2026.
How does Australia compare with other research & development markets?
Among the 35 countries where GlobalGov holds a comparable research & development market, Australia ranks 1st by number of records. No other country in the corpus publishes more of it. Within Australia itself, research & development is the 4th largest of the 9 procurement categories tracked here.
Where do the Australia research & development records on this page come from?
These 13,059 records are collected from 1 official source: AusTender (13,059). GlobalGov is an independent aggregator and is not affiliated with any of them; each record links back to the notice on its issuing portal. The set is rebuilt nightly, and the counts on this page were taken on 2026-10-01.
Most recent Research & Development tenders in Australia
No individual notice in this category currently has a public record page. The market figures above are computed over all 13,059 records GlobalGov holds for it.
Other procurement categories in Australia
Research & Development procurement in other markets
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