The ACT government has called for tenders to maintain its public housing property portfolio.

Its 11,600 properties are currently looked after by Spotless, which also holds contracts with the Australian National University and Defence.

Their five-year, $242 million contract with the Community Services Directorate expired in June, but was extended until November next year to allow the "procurement process, including, if relevant, to transition the services to an incoming provider", a Housing ACT spokeswoman said.

ACT Auditor-General Maxine Cooper last year lashed Spotless for failing to properly check up on tenants after work had been done in their home.

The company was supposed to follow up on 5 per cent of work orders each month to check the work, and is paid incentives or charged abatements as a result.

A check in November 2013 found that 85 per cent of the 21 tenants supposedly audited had not received a visit or phone call from Spotless, with no documentation or photos of the 21 audits. Spotless found no fails, whereas a departmental team found that 19 of the 21 work orders had either trade or administrative deficiencies.

In late 2013 and early 2014, 100 work orders were checked by the government, finding a 19 per cent fail rate compared with Spotless' fail rate of 3 per cent.

Only a quarter of tenants had received a call from Spotless about the work and only 15 per cent had received a visit.

But the ACT government said the tender was unrelated to Dr Cooper's audit.

A spokeswoman said it was advertised to "take advantage of developments and innovation in the total facility management industry since 2012, when Spotless began their current contract".

Indeed, the government first extended the contract last August until June this year, despite the audit findings being handed down in April 2016.

CSD Housing has paid Spotless more than $10 million from June until October, according to the government's notifiable contracts register.

However the spokeswoman admitted the reporting requirements had been tightened up in the proposed contract.

Now the contractor must be rated "good" on at least 18 of 25 indicators and poor on none to receive their incentive payment.

For "superior" performance, a bonus of up to 10 per cent of the base management fee can be paid.

For substandard performance, a maximum of 5 per cent of their fee can be withheld.

Last financial year the Spotless call centre received more than 68,000 calls from public housing tenants and more than 67,000 work orders were issued.

In the same period, Spotless received 465 complaints about their maintenance and 29 complaints were lodged with Housing ACT.

The public housing maintenance contract is one of the ACT's largest ongoing contract.

Housing ACT spent more than $41 million last financial year to repair, maintain and upgrade its public housing portfolio.

That accounted for about 45 per cent of all it spent on public housing.

Tender documents show historically, most was spent on general and planned maintenance.

In 2015-16, $8.5 million was spent on general maintenance, $5.6 million on planned maintenance, $5.1 million on electrical work and $4 million on plumbing.