Where is the line?
$100,000 for goods, services and refurbishment works. $9 million for new construction works. Above those values, agencies must seek economic benefits, evaluated as part of public value. Below them, agencies are expected (good practice with a recorded decision) to award to New Zealand businesses that are capable and have capacity, unless there is good reason not to.
Estimate the value the way Rule 7 expects before you decide which side of the line you are on. A firm that guesses the line from the cover letter will misread the weighting that follows.
What does the 10 percent require of your response?
A section of the response worth at least a tenth of the score, written against the expectations the notice actually named. The Rule lists the family: New Zealand resources and workforce, local businesses and SMEs in delivery or the supply chain, export and supply-chain development, industry capability, innovation that benefits New Zealand communities, sustainability, and social and cultural outcomes. The notice picks from that family. Your response answers the pick, not the whole family.
Cost the commitment before you promise it. Apprenticeships, regional subcontracting, reporting, monitoring: each has a delivery price. A 10 percent criterion you win with an uncosted promise becomes a margin event the month after award. Price it on price to win versus price to deliver before the gate, not after.
What about Broader Outcomes?
Broader Outcomes was the 4th-edition framing for this family of ideas. It survives in legacy contracts, older packs, panel agreements formed before 1 December 2025, and agency web pages nobody updated. Treat it as dated context: useful for reading a 4th-edition pack, wrong as the name for a current Rule 8 criterion.
If a current notice uses the old term, answer the current test and name the mapping in one sentence. Do not lecture the buyer. Do not ignore the term either; evaluation panels read what the notice says.
What does non-discrimination mean here?
Rule 8 operates inside New Zealand’s trade commitments, including free trade agreements and the Australia and New Zealand Government Procurement Agreement. Agencies must treat suppliers equitably and not discriminate on size, location, or ownership. In practice: explain your New Zealand operations, workforce, subcontractors, and supply chain as facts. Do not claim a local-preference right the Rules do not give you, and do not assume a foreign-incorporated competitor cannot evidence the same benefits.
The checklist
- Threshold. Above or below $100k goods/services, $9m new construction. Which Rule 8 paragraph fires.
- Notice expectations. Which benefits the notice names, and whether they are proportionate to size, risk, complexity, and value.
- Weighting. 10 percent minimum above the line; higher if the notice says so. Hours follow weight.
- Commitment. What you will deliver, measured how, by when. Contract provisions will hold you to it.
- Delivery cost. Priced in the offer, not absorbed later. Monitoring is part of the bargain.
- Evidence. Workforce data, subcontractor arrangements, supply-chain facts. Held today, or a question for the gate.
What does this mean for the bid/no-bid call?
If the criterion is weighted at 10 percent or more and your New Zealand delivery evidence is thin, that is a strategy fail, not a writing challenge. Partner, subcontract, or no-bid, but do not write ten percent of the response on hope. If the pack is 4th-edition, assess it as legacy and check the applicability page before importing current-rule assumptions: which requirements apply. Where the commitment changes the price, the second gate is the evaluation method before you price. Australian local-content instincts stay in Australia: local content, SME and Indigenous targets.