The role of massive (>=8M_{sun}) stars in defining the energy budget and chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium in their host galaxy is significant. In this first paper from the Tracing Evolution in Massive Protostellar Objects (TEMPO) project we introduce a colour-luminosity selected (L*~3x10^3^ to 1x10^5^L{sun}) sample of 38 massive star forming regions observed with ALMA at 1.3mm and explore the fragmentation, clustering and flux density properties of the sample. The TEMPO sample fields are each found to contain multiple fragments (between 2-15 per field). The flux density budget is split evenly (53%-47%) between fields where emission is dominated by a single high flux density fragment and those in which the combined flux density of fainter objects dominates. The fragmentation scales observed in most fields are not comparable with the thermal Jeans length, {lambda}_J, being larger in the majority of cases, suggestive of some non-thermal mechanism. A tentative evolutionary trend is seen between luminosity of the clump and the "spectral line richness" of the TEMPO fields; with 6.7GHz maser associated fields found to be lower luminosity and more line rich. This work also describes a method of line-free continuum channel selection within ALMA data and a generalised approach used to distinguishing sources which are potentially star-forming from those which are not, utilising interferometric visibility properties.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/526/2278/table1 (Selection criteria properties of fields in the sample)

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/526/2278/table4 (Sources detected in the TEMPO sample)