Working with us

At all levels and in all areas across the NSW Government, we acknowledge and value the essential skills and partnership industry provides to School Infrastructure.

Overview

We are committed to delivering the best school environments for students, teachers, and communities across NSW. To achieve this goal, we have combined a best-practice approach to design, engineering, and technology, with cultural knowledge and educational principles to create innovative, modern and flexible school environments.

Our Educational Facilities and Standards Guidelines (EFSG) and EFSG Technical Standards provide the information needed for SI’s design and technical requirements to build school facilities that meet the growing demands on our educational system. By doing so, SI is able to provide top-quality infrastructure for current and future public school students.

The EFSG is now published across two websites and demonstrates SI’s commitment to ensuring that our schools are designed and built to our specific standards, with opportunities for projects to benefit from new innovations and technologies beyond NSW regulatory requirements.

The publicly accessible EFSG website presents planning and design principles to support the design requirements for our school facilities. It outlines key considerations in the development and implementation of a standardised design approach that enables our delivery partners to reliably provide safe and high-performing learning environments. The website also provides transparency and an understanding of the rationale driving the design of our schools.

The EFSG Technical Standards website provides a concise set of technical standards that collaborators and delivery partners can access. This website details the high standards of design and construction required to build robust and world-class educational facilities for our communities. The development of these standards includes sophisticated and rigorous testing, in accordance with the EFSG Governance process.

We are committed to building partnerships with councils and other Government agencies, as well as the private sector through working closely with our industry partners throughout all phases of our projects.

Local councils and agencies

We work closely with local Councils and other agencies to deliver infrastructure solutions that benefit both schools and local communities.

We work with partner organisations to provide modern facilities such as halls, libraries and sporting fields that can be shared with the wider community outside of school hours.

Many schools are equipped with open space and other facilities which can be used by the local community without compromising the safety of schools and their operations. 

Our partner agencies include Greater Sydney Commission, Urban Growth NSW, Landcom, the Land and Housing Corporation, the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and local councils.

Private sector

Our approach to industry engagement is to communicate effectively, to be open and responsive and to work in partnership to improve and streamline procurement opportunities.

Our Major Projects Tender Pipeline 2024/25 provides details of our upcoming projects and clearly identifies the opportunities for industry to work with us. Together we can deliver improved outcomes for NSW students, families, communities and businesses.

We publish upcoming and current tenders on the NSW Government eTendering website.

We also aim to partner with local communities to integrate schools into new developments and provide our students with modern upgraded schools that respond to student learning and teaching trends in the most cost-effective way. This includes building schools in mixed-use developments while ensuring that there is adequate play space.

In addition, we’re making it easier for local trades to access a selection of maintenance jobs valued up to $50,000 at schools in their area with our Local Trades Scheme.

We have recently appointed a manufacturing partner for the Manufacturing for Schools program. This program has the potential to deliver significant sustainability outcomes and drive productivity and quality efficiencies.

In addition, Manufacturing for Schools will allow the department to build more quality schools in less time, providing greater delivery certainty with less impact on the environment, local communities and existing school operations. This is good news for industry and students too.

 We will notify the industry of opportunities to work with us on this program through the  NSW Government eTendering website.

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