The Department is responsible for one of the largest asset portfolios in the country. The Infrastructure & Sustainability Division (ISD) of the Department manages over 1,500 government schools and over 27,000 buildings with a total asset replacement value exceeding $16 billion and accommodating over 546,000 students.

Relocatable buildings are utilised to enable supplementary classroom accommodation to be provided for short, medium and long-term needs. The requirement for a relocatable building may be due to changing enrolments, capital works being undertaken on the school site or an emergency situation. The Department has a fleet of over 6,000 relocatable buildings.

Relocatable buildings are a cost effective and flexible means of providing classroom and other ancillary space for Government schools. The relocatable buildings are most commonly used as general teaching space to supplement permanent school facilities. Some relocatable buildings provide specialist rooms such as music or science facilities, toilet blocks or other special purpose space.

It is the Department‟s policy to allocate a mix of both permanent and relocatable classrooms to schools to meet their school accommodation needs. Approximately 80 per cent of teaching space is provided to new schools by permanent buildings and 20 per cent by relocatable classrooms. This enables the Department to provide a flexible schooling environment that has the capacity to cater for the changing enrolment needs of individual schools.

Relocatable classrooms are modular buildings. They are transportable by road and can be moved on site readily or, if required, lifted in and out of sites by crane. The Department experience has been that relocatable classrooms have the benefits of cheaper construction costs and transferability compared to permanent buildings.

Each relocatable building comprises a number of modules. The current dual classroom design comprises five modules. The modules are bolted together and can form a diverse range of buildings of varying sizes and configurations. Individual modules of the most recent design are 3.6 m wide x 9.6 m long.

The Department has purchased and wholly owned the new relocatable classrooms that are commissioned as part of the capital works procurement programs for relocatable buildings. The Department transfers ownership of redundant relocatable classrooms that are to be removed from sites as part of those programs.

This document describes the Department‟s current arrangements which it intends to change. The Department is keen to understand market interest, capability and capacity and change the current arrangements so as to provide for optimum efficiency and availability of buildings. Through this market consultation process, the Department is seeking comments from industry on how best to structure the relocatable building program to meet the challenges of the program (outlined below) in the longer term. Interested organisations are invited to provide comments by completing and lodging the Comment and EOI Form. The Department is also seeking EOIs to deliver transfer services from August 2015.

* Relocatable Buildings Transfer Program
* Program management

While the EOI is specifically about delivery of the transfer services from August 2015, the consultation comments can address the structure of the services in the longer term or any other aspect of the relocatable buildings program.

Details on program management and procurement of new buildings are contained in procurement of new relocatable buildings Attachment 1. Further information about the program is contained in the Relocatable Buildings in Schools Operational Program Guidelines December 2014 issued with this invitation.