Our sources

Forward Works is built only from public records: the minutes of council meetings and the contract registers councils publish on their own websites. Nothing comes from tender portals behind a login, from suppliers, or from guesswork.

What we read

• Council minutes. The resolution that awards, extends or varies a contract, and the officer report it sits in. We read the item, not the whole book, and we keep the page number.
• Contract registers. Where a council publishes a register of awarded contracts (a web page or a PDF), we take each line as the council wrote it.
• Closed-session schedules. A contract decided in closed session is listed with the meeting date and the item title only, marked “Decided in closed session: details not published”.

Right now that covers 26 Victorian councils and 15 sectors, waste and recycling first. The rest of Victoria and New South Wales follow.

What we record

• The contractor exactly as the council wrote it, typos included. A panel lists every name. A decision that names no contractor says so; we never infer one. A person named as a contractor is shown as the council published the name and never with an address or contact detail.
• The value as stated, with its GST basis when the council gave one. “Not stated in the decision” means exactly that.
• The end date. Stated when the council stated it. Estimated, and labelled so, when the council gave a term and a start: the estimate shows its working. “End date not published” when neither is there.
• Where it came from. Every fact links to the council document and page it was read from. If a link breaks because a council moves its files, the fact stays and the link is repaired on the next weekly run.

Status labels

Each contract carries one of five labels drawn from evidence in the sources we hold, kept apart from the facts above:

• Tender announced: the council has published a tender or an intention to tender for this work.
• Retender expected: a council document says the contract will go to market.
• Under review: a council document says the service or contract is being reviewed.
• Contract ending, no announcement yet: the end date is within two years and we have found nothing else.
• No information yet: nothing in our sources bears on it.

When the newest council record behind a label is more than 90 days old we show its date (“Latest council record: Mar 2021”); it describes the age of the council’s document, not of our reading. We don’t predict tender outcomes.

How we check

• A hand-researched answer key of council contracts is re-scored on every change to the extraction; the register is published only when it scores 100% on contractor, value and end date.
• Each sector is checked by hand on a sample before it is shown. Sectors still being checked are held back.
• Every council source is watched for change; a source that stops updating or starts blocking us is flagged, not papered over.

How we behave on council websites

Our reader identifies itself, obeys each site’s robots.txt and terms, spaces its requests, and never works around a block. We don’t host council documents: we store the facts we read and link to the council’s own copy.

Other data on the site

Business names, states and postcodes in the free preview come from the Australian Business Register (ABN Lookup) at the moment you ask and are not stored. Postcode locations used to pick councils near you come from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0. Council and policy watch lines come from public pages of Victorian agencies whose terms allow it; the list and the checks are published in the open.

Every fact links to the council document it came from. Estimates are labelled. We don't predict tender outcomes. Check the source before you act.

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