Insights

If you walk into any Tier 1 HQ in January 2026, those big, quad stacked monitors are impressive. You’ll see ‘Digital Twins’ - perfect, rotating 3D models of the asset, colour-coded by trade, with live metadata feeds and AI-driven predictive maintenance schedules. It looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. But if you drive 20km down the road to the actual site, you find a very different reality. You find a Foreman standing in the mud, squinting at an iPad glare he ca

If you walk into a boardroom in January 2026, you’ll hear a tale of two economies. On one side of the table, the BD Manager is bullish. The pipeline is huge ($1.14 trillion according to Infrastructure Australia); government funding is secure and stable; the biggest problem is finding enough warm bodies to do the work. On the other side, the CFO is sweating. Insolvencies are at record highs, margins are non-existent, and every week brings news of another mid-tier builder hit

It's January. The holidays are over. You are back in the boardroom looking at the forecast for the financial year. The temptation is almost overwhelming. “We need to grow. We need to hit $50 million this year. If we just win these three tenders, we fill the order book and the overheads take care of themselves.” Stop. If the last two years have taught us anything, it's that in the current Australian construction market, turnover is vanity . We are seeing a dangerous trend wher

For the last two decades, Victoria has been the odd one out in the Security of Payment world. While NSW and Queensland allowed contractors to throw almost anything into an adjudication (including complex delay damages and disruption costs) Victoria had a unique safety valve called ‘Excluded Amounts’. It meant that if a claim was too complex, too messy, or related to time costs and damages, it was generally blocked from the rapid adjudication process. It was roundly and soundl

For the last twenty years, the Golden Rule of Queensland construction has been simple: Do not touch the RDOs. The RDO calendar wasn’t just a roster; it was a religious text. You could have a critical concrete pour, a looming liquidated damages date, or a cyclone bearing down on the coast—it didn't matter. If it was a Rostered Day Off, the site gates were locked. But 2026 feels different. With the CFMEU (Construction & General Division) now firmly under Administration followin