One of the most important decisions in any community housing or residential care project is the selection of the Builder (or Head Contractor).

It’s almost always the highest value contract on the job.

It also carries the most delivery risk.

Prior to construction, you’re working with consultants - planning, designing and reporting.

Once a builder is engaged, the project moves onto site.

The cost of making changes increases. It’s not lines on page anymore.

It’s also a long-term relationship. You’re choosing a delivery partner for the next 12–24 months (sometimes longer), and how that relationship works will have a direct impact on how the project performs.

So the question is: How do you select a builder you can actually trust to deliver?

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Start with the client, not the contractor

Before you look at a single tender submission, you need to understand what matters to the client.

Different housing providers have different priorities:

• Some are highly focused on cost
• Some care more about quality and long-term performance
• Some are risk-averse and want a safe pair of hands
• Others are able to take on more risk to reach a favourable commercial outcome

There’s no right or wrong answer here. But there has to be clarity because those priorities flow directly into your community or social housing project procurement strategy.

If that isn’t clear from the start, everything that follows becomes harder, from evaluation through to contract selection.

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Set up your evaluation criteria properly

Once you understand what matters, the next step is to translate that into builder evaluation criteria for community housing projects. This is where structured procurement starts to take shape.

Most projects will include a mix of:

• cost
• program
• methodology
• team experience
• company experience
• safety and quality systems
• financial capacity and insurances

These are typically broken into two parts:

Mandatory criteria

These are the baseline requirements.

Things like:

• licensing
• insurance (including DBI where required)
• safety certifications
• compliance requirements

If a contractor doesn’t meet these, it might not be the right project for them.

Weighted criteria

This is where you differentiate between contractors. It’s important to understand that the weighting needs to reflect the client’s priorities. For instance, if cost is the main driver, it may carry more weight. If the project is complex or operationally sensitive, experience and methodology may matter more.

For example, cost might sit at 60% on one project but on another, it might be closer to 30%, with more emphasis on experience and delivery approach.

This is the first real step in evaluating contractors beyond price.

Because price on its own won’t tell you how the project will actually be delivered.

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Experience matters, but it has to be relevant

One of the most common traps in social housing project contractor selection is assuming that scale equals capability. A contractor might have delivered large projects. That doesn’t automatically mean they understand your type of project.

Housing projects, particularly in sectors like social and community housing, aged care and specialist disability accommodation come with specific requirements.

Operational constraints. Resident safety considerations. Regulatory expectations.

You will need to consider:

• Have they delivered this type of asset before?
• Do they understand how it’s used once it’s built?
• Does the actual project team have that experience?

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Capacity is just as important as capability

A contractor can look great on paper and still struggle to deliver, and capacity is where things often start to show up.

You need to understand:

• How many projects are they currently running?
• Do they have the resources available for your project?
• Are key people stretched across multiple jobs?
• Can they obtain and maintain the required insurances?

For residential care projects, insurance limits and resource constraints are real factors.

A builder might want the job, but that doesn’t always mean they have the capacity to take it on properly.

This is a key part of community housing project delivery risk management and it’s often underexplored during procurement.

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Get the contract and risk alignment right

The contract is really just a reflection of something more fundamental:

What level of risk is the client comfortable with, and how much of that do they want to pass on to the head contractor?

Every project sits somewhere on that spectrum.

Some clients want to de-risk as much as possible. They are happy to pay for certainty and prefer the contractor to take on more responsibility. Others are comfortable holding certain risks themselves if it gives them more control or flexibility.

That position needs to be clear early.

Because once you understand that, it starts to shape everything else, including the type of contractor you’re actually looking for.

Some contractors are set up to take on more risk. Others aren’t. And even when they are, it will show up in pricing. If there’s a mismatch between the client’s expectations and the contractor’s appetite, it usually plays out in one of two ways: either the price comes in higher than expected, or issues start to surface during delivery when those risks become real.

This is where experience and capacity come into it as well.

A contractor might look suitable on paper, but you still need to understand:

• Have they delivered this type of project before, particularly in social housing or specialist accommodation?
• Do they have depth as an organisation, not just at a headline level?
• Can they obtain the required insurances, like DBI, for this type of work?
• How many other projects are they currently delivering, and do they have the capacity to take this on properly?

There are practical limits here. Insurance capacity can restrict how much work a contractor can take on. Resources can get stretched. Teams can get spread too thin.

So when you’re thinking about social housing construction contract selection, it’s not just about the contract terms. It’s about making sure the risk profile, the contractor’s experience, and their actual capacity all line up with what the project requires.

One important factor to consider is undue risk and disproportionate liability. Legal advice should be sought on this matter.

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If you want to go deeper into how risk plays out across the social housing project lifecycle, you can read our blog on the six phases of housing project delivery - it ties closely into how procurement decisions impact what happens on site.

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The importance of relationship

The relationship with a head contractor is one of the most important factor in the project.

When things go well, it enables smooth delivery.

When things don’t go to plan, that relationship becomes even more important.

You start to see it in small things, like how they communicate, how transparent they are about risks, how they approach problems and whether they work with you or against you.

This is where experience matters; knowing how contractors operate in practice, not just how they present in a tender.

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Red flags to watch for

Even strong submissions can carry risks.

Some things to look out for:

• Pricing that is significantly lower than others
• Limited experience in the relevant housing sector
• Teams that look strong on paper but are thin in delivery
• Overcommitted resources
• Lack of clarity in methodology or program
• Reluctance to engage with key project risks

These don’t automatically rule out a contractor, but they are signals that need to be understood before moving forward.

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Where experience, and MakeSpace, come in

Contractor selection is structured through criteria, weightings and scoring frameworks. All of that matters but it only gets you to a certain point.

You can assess price, program, methodology and experience on paper. You can compare submissions side by side, which helps narrow the field.

But what all that doesn’t fully capture is how that contractor will actually perform once the project is underway.

That’s where experience comes in.

Understanding how contractors operate in practice.

Knowing who has delivered well in similar projects.

Knowing where things have gone wrong,  and why.

At MakeSpace, we work exclusively in specialised residential sectors like social and community housing, aged care, retirement living and SDA.

We see how contractors perform across different clients and different delivery environments. We hear the feedback from providers. And we understand what tends to hold up once the project moves onto site.

So when we support contractor procurement for housing projects, it’s not just about running a process. It’s bringing together:

• a structured procurement approach
• clear evaluation criteria
• and experience of how these decisions play out during delivery

Selecting a builder for housing projects is about making a decision that still makes sense when the project is under pressure, and that’s where MakeSpace can make a difference.

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