It is the one clock that rules them all.
As befitting its status as the time keeper that sets the seconds, minutes and hours inside Parliament House, it is known as the "master clock".
And a new one is needed.
In news that will delight horologists everywhere the Department of Parliamentary Services has begun the tender process for a new master clock and its reference system.
The successful tenderer's job will be no smaller task than ensuring that time is not lost inside Parliament House.
"The solution provides that parliamentary time continues undisturbed if external references are lost or reacquired," the document explains.
From its secure location inside Parliament House's central equipment area the master clock is the overlord of 2,500 "slave clocks" which adorn the walls of Parliament House and flash red or green to alert the attention of senators and members that their presence is required in the chamber.
"The master clock gets a time reference from a satellite using a GPS antenna and distributes the time reference to various systems (slaves) thereby enforcing a common time throughout Parliament House," the tender document explains.
It is considered part of the building's "critical infrastructure".
Tender conditions include that the master clock must never experience an outage of longer than 48 hours and be backed by a response team than can respond within 60 minutes of a problem with the time being reported.
A disaster recovery plan must also be supplied and the master clock must be able to switch automatically between daylight savings and non daylight savings time.
The winning horologist will also have to prepare an options paper for switching over the 2,500 slave clocks from analogue to digital.
