The $783 million 12-kilometre tramline will dominate major infrastructure in Canberra for three years of construction from 2016. With the tram to be built and operated by an international consortium, local businesses are optimistic about the opportunities and worried about missing out.

Manteena chief executive Simon Butt, whose company has worked on the city bus interchange, train stations and projects such as the National Gallery extension, said it was crucial contracts were handled carefully.

"There is certainly some opportunity," he said. "It really depends on how the government frames that in the tender documents because that's the only opportunity they're going to have to try to encourage the two proponents to use local content. Too often we see the political masters saying 'yes, let's do it', but then the bureaucracy don't actually do it and we end up with work that could be done admirably by locals being managed from out of town."

Another danger was the government putting "all its eggs in one basket" – with the budget demands of the light rail project and the Mr Fluffy buyback drying up spending on other projects.

"What we want we to see is that there is an investment across Canberra continuously, that's what small to medium businesses need," Mr Butt said.

His will be among more than 100 local companies attending Thursday's "meet the bidders" event with the shortlisted consortiums, Activate and Canberra Metro, where he hoped to clarify the opportunities.

Managing director of Cord Civil Nigel Forde, whose company does roads, bridges and subdivision works, said the line could bring significant intersection work, depending how the contracts were packaged.

"If they turn round and say we want a subcontractor to do all of the intersections and all of the work, I don't think there's a contractor in town big enough to do that, so it's imperative that the consortium can structure it in a way that the local contractors have opportunity," he said. "They'll need to split the package up I would have thought."

Mr Forde echoed Mr Butt's concern that money must keep flowing to other projects.

"If local companies like ours can't get involved, the future could be quite bleak because there possibly won't be other opportunities around because of the funding that's going to go into this project," he said. "There's been a lot of opposition to it, but it looks like it's going to be built, and if it's going to be built we want to be involved."

Cord Civil and Manteena each employ more than 60 people. Hawkins Civil is smaller, employing 25, and operations manager Lachlan Haskins said he knew very little to date about tram opportunities in his area of work – road widening, intersection upgrades and bridge strengthening.

"We're just trying to suss out what's going on at the moment," he said. "The government's going to be spending a lot of money on this infrastructure so we need to make sure we can maintain a steady workload. If they're not spending as much money elsewhere, we need to make sure we're a part of this."

Master Builders Association ACT executive director Kirk Coningham said such significant infrastructure was "an essential part of becoming a city state" and would get ahead of population growth.

"There are two things you get from investing in infrastructure: you get the long-term productivity gains that that infrastructure delivers, but I think more importantly for Canberra today you get the short to medium-term stimulus effect and the growth in the skills base that these large projects provide."

The government should do everything it could to ensure the money stayed in the Canberra economy, including "chunking" the project into small contracts.

Employing local contractors also had a "legacy" effect, with people involved feeling responsibility for it. "When it's done internationally it disappears as some glossy photo on a glossy brochure, it doesn't have that sticking or staying power that delivers a real quality result because you have ownership of it," he said. "It's about legacy, it's a tangible permanent mark of the quality of the work that you do ... It's being able to tell your kids and your grandkids and having bragging rights about what you did."

Capital Metro Minister Simon Corbell said the consortiums would present their plans for engaging with local industry at the April 9 event.

In the bids, they would be asked to show how they intended to facilitate local industry engagement and provide fair and equitable treatment of ACT suppliers.