97 Per Cent of Bricklaying Is New Construction. Andy Shaw Says That Is the Whole Problem.
Andy Shaw started his apprenticeship at 14, ran a bricklaying business for 15 years and has since worked alongside more than 25 bricklaying businesses around the country. On the podcast he set out why the trade is built differently to every other one on site, and why...
Queensland Declares $1.9 Billion in Steel Projects. The Rebar Arrives in 2028.
Three projects just got a Prescribed Project declaration. It is a coordination tool with a two year clock on it, not an approval, and it does not put a single tonne of reinforcing bar on a Queensland site any sooner than 2028. Queensland has just declared three steel...
Construction Is Australia’s Most Exposed Industry in the New National Survey. Silica Tops the List.
The 2026 Australian Worker Exposure Survey puts construction at the top of the national table for cumulative exposure, for silica and for lead. It also shows the industry running the country’s highest rate of high level exposure to three agents that rarely make the...
Australia leads the world on construction AI adoption. Productivity confidence has not followed.
Australian construction reports artificial intelligence adopted at scale at nearly twice the global rate. It is also less confident than the rest of the world about improving productivity. The distance between those two numbers is the whole story. Australian...
latest news
Construction Is Becoming a Data Business. Most Builders Already Own the Asset.
Every estimate, variation, delay and defect a building business records says something about how it actually performs. The widening gap is between the builders who read that record and the builders who file it. A building business generates information constantly....
Multiplex Breaks Ground on AURA an $800 Million Build in Southbank, Melbourne.
Multiplex is back on site at Melbourne Square for the fourth time. The way AURA got to a groundbreaking says as much about apartment construction right now as the tower does. Multiplex has started work on AURA, an $800 million, 67 storey residential tower at the...
Four States Are Rewriting Building Regulation at Once. They Disagree on What the Problem Is
NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia all have building reform underway. Each has picked a different constraint to fix, and almost none of it has started yet. Four states are rewriting the rules that govern building work. What gets less attention is that...
Australia Is Repairing Almost as Many Homes as It Is Building
Declared events damaged 145,392 homes in 2025. The country completed 172,657 new ones. The repair market draws on the same trades, the same materials and the same capacity, and the official housing numbers do not separate the two. In 2025, declared natural disaster...
The Construction Industry Is Changing What ‘Growth’ Looks Like
Queensland’s 100 largest residential builders wrote 962 fewer new home contracts in FY2025/26 and still lifted total contract value by 4.9%. For an industry that has long measured success in homes built, that gap raises a useful question about what growth actually...
From Buying Materials to Owning the Supply Chain: Are Builders Changing How They Build?
One builder bought its cabinetry supplier. Two of the country’s largest companies are building a factory. Underneath both sits the same question about which part of the chain is worth controlling. Most builders answer a supply problem by finding another supplier. A...
Queensland Has $174 Billion of Construction Coming. Where Is It Actually Going?
A new portal maps 617 major projects worth $173.76 billion out to 2030. The split between Brisbane and the regions, and the handful of trades the work will compete for, are where the number starts to mean something. Queensland's major project pipeline now runs to...
Nearly 400 lots sold in Waraba: What Building in Queensland’s Newest City Takes.
Lilywood Landings is the first masterplanned community to open inside Waraba, the growth area planned to hold 30,000 homes north of Brisbane. Lennium Group's Leon Calahorra on the pipeline, the guidelines and what the developer side wants from builders. Queensland's...
MORE NEWS
Victoria Will Fine Falls From Height On the Spot. Enforcement Moves From Rare to Routine.
The Victorian Government says inspectors will soon be able to issue immediate fines for falls from height offences. The mechanism sitting behind that sentence is the part worth reading, because it changes how often a penalty can land, not how big it is. On Friday 18...
Concrete Surcharges Are Back, and the Cost Indexes Are Not Picking Them Up
Suppliers are recovering the cost of this year's fuel shock through levies and freight charges rather than published price rises. The effect on a build is the same. The visibility is not. Concrete suppliers applied fuel surcharges of around $8 per cubic metre in late...
540 Companies in One Day. Why the Insolvency Numbers Will Look Worse Next Year.
A single corporate structure now sits inside the construction insolvency figures that will be quoted for the next twelve months. Taking it out moves the number by fourteen percentage points. On 25 August 2026, 540 construction companies entered voluntary...
Bowen Hills Planning Overhaul Would Allow 50 Storey Towers and Drop Affordable Housing and Green Building Targets
The Queensland Government wants more than 4,000 extra homes in Bowen Hills. The draft scheme that would allow them also removes the affordable housing, family sized dwelling, green building and value uplift requirements that apply there today. The Queensland...
The Good Builder Podcast
PARTNER CONTENT
National Courses Explains How to Check If a White Card Is Genuine
Most builders glance at a White Card, see the right colours and a photo that matches the face in front of them, and let the worker through. That's about as useful as checking if a $50 note is pink. A card can look completely normal and still be fake, copied, or issued...
Solar Is Still Missing From Most New Builds, and the Barrier Is Warranty Exposure Rather Than Cost or Technology
More than 4.2 million rooftop solar systems have been installed across Australia. Another 478,176 home batteries went in between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026 alone, adding 13.58 gigawatt hours of storage in twelve months. Almost none of that work happens during...
Goop Guys Names Mark Sutton General Manager. He Says Surface Protection Is a Risk Decision, Not a Cost Line.
The new general manager of the Sunshine Coast surface protection business has spent a career in hardware, paint and building products. His first read on the market is that builders skipping protection are not cutting costs. They are taking a bet. A $5,000 bathtub gets...
Seven Star Energy Requirements Pushed Builders Into High Performance Glazing, Changing What a Damaged Window Now Costs
The glass going into Australian homes is more expensive, more technical and harder to replace than it was five years ago. Site practice has not caught up. For most of the past decade, a scratched window on a residential site was a nuisance with a known price. The...
The Cold That Quietly Costs Builders Every Winter, and How to Take the Bite Out of It
Winter on the tools is more than a miserable morning. Across a season it slows the work, wears down the crew, and quietly eats into the margin. Here is what the cold really costs, and why The Good Builder and Milwaukee are giving something back to the builders who cop...
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MyConstruct and BuiltGrid Bring RFQs and Pricing Into One Connected Workflow
Why more builders are moving procurement out of the inbox and into the system they already run their jobs from. There is a moment most builders know well. The job is mapped out, the costs are still moving, and the plan for the week is clear enough. Then you open your...
The Surface Damage That Quietly Costs Everyone on Site, and How to Stop It Before It Starts
A chipped benchtop or a scratched pane of glass rarely stops a job. But across a build, that kind of damage quietly costs both the builder and the trades real time and real money. Here is why it happens, and how Goop Guys' surface protection removes the cost before it...
Your Next Job Comes From Your Last Client: Why Every Builder Needs a Customer Experience Program
Of every tool a builder can put in their business, a customer experience program is one of the most critical. It is not the flashiest. It is one of the most important, and here is what it actually does. Ask most builders where their next job comes from and they will...
The New Priorities Shaping Multi-Residential Projects
The current state of Australia’s housing market is pressured, to say the least. New apartments and built-to-rent developments still lag behind demand, and although some states show promising growth in stock, forecasts from the National Housing Supply and Affordability...
industry profiles
QA Build Bought Its Own Cabinetry, Solar and Electrical Businesses. James Drever Calls It Removing the Roadblock
The chief executive of QA Build runs a business that owns a slice of its own supply chain, works two months ahead of site and is building its own trade college. He told the Good Builder Podcast the thinking started with a roofing shortage. Most builders answer a...
Chris Baskerville Answers Your Questions on the Bathla Collapse, From Who Gets Paid First to How Long It Takes
We asked our community what they wanted to know about the Bathla administration. The questions that came back were about exposure, not blame, and the answers turned on one distinction. “If you have a bill outstanding before the administrator rolls in, that money...
Vinnie Vecchio – TPB Head Coach Says the Fix for Bad Cash Flow Sits in the Contract, Not the Bank Account
Vinnie Vecchio coaches builders across four countries. Asked what the single biggest constraint is, he did not hesitate. Then he broke it into parts. Ask a builder what is hurting the business and you usually get a list. Trades. Clients. Prices. Approvals. Weather....
Johno the Plumber on Care Factor, Accountability and Why Trades Have Stopped Looking Out for Each Other
Robert Cragg (aka Johno the Plumber) has spent twenty four years on the tools in Melbourne. His argument is that the standards problem in Australian construction has less to do with skill than with who is willing to protect the next trade through the door. Ask Robert...
A Small Battery on a New Build Can Use Up the Home’s Only Federal Rebate, and It Is Usually Spent Before Handover
The federal battery discount can be claimed once at a given address. Not once a year. Not once per battery. Once. That single rule sits underneath a decision plenty of builders are now making on behalf of their clients. Fit a modest battery to round out an energy...
Coldbuster’s Rick Florence Says Only One in a Hundred Clients Ever Sees a Floor Heating Quote Before the Floors Go Down
The managing director of a floor heating business in its 26th year argues the industry is not losing these sales. It is never making the offer, on a decision that expires the day the floor covering goes down. There is one number at the centre of Rick Florence’s...
Solar Is Still Missing From Most New Builds, and the Barrier Is Warranty Exposure Rather Than Cost or Technology
More than 4.2 million rooftop solar systems have been installed across Australia. Another 478,176 home batteries went in between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026 alone, adding 13.58 gigawatt hours of storage in twelve months. Almost none of that work happens during...
Goop Guys Names Mark Sutton General Manager. He Says Surface Protection Is a Risk Decision, Not a Cost Line.
The new general manager of the Sunshine Coast surface protection business has spent a career in hardware, paint and building products. His first read on the market is that builders skipping protection are not cutting costs. They are taking a bet. A $5,000 bathtub gets...
Wattle Court Puts Every New Builder Through 13 Weeks of Training. None of It Covers Construction.
What one franchise founder's onboarding model says about the part of the job builders were never taught Most builders who sign with a franchise group expect a brand, a set of plans and a lead flow. Matt Hope spends the first 13 weeks on none of those things. "We put...
home builder news
Construction Is Becoming a Data Business. Most Builders Already Own the Asset.
Every estimate, variation, delay and defect a building business records says something about how it actually performs. The widening gap is between the builders who read that record and the builders who file it. A building business generates information constantly....
Australia Is Repairing Almost as Many Homes as It Is Building
Declared events damaged 145,392 homes in 2025. The country completed 172,657 new ones. The repair market draws on the same trades, the same materials and the same capacity, and the official housing numbers do not separate the two. In 2025, declared natural disaster...
The Construction Industry Is Changing What ‘Growth’ Looks Like
Queensland’s 100 largest residential builders wrote 962 fewer new home contracts in FY2025/26 and still lifted total contract value by 4.9%. For an industry that has long measured success in homes built, that gap raises a useful question about what growth actually...
From Buying Materials to Owning the Supply Chain: Are Builders Changing How They Build?
One builder bought its cabinetry supplier. Two of the country’s largest companies are building a factory. Underneath both sits the same question about which part of the chain is worth controlling. Most builders answer a supply problem by finding another supplier. A...
Queensland Has $174 Billion of Construction Coming. Where Is It Actually Going?
A new portal maps 617 major projects worth $173.76 billion out to 2030. The split between Brisbane and the regions, and the handful of trades the work will compete for, are where the number starts to mean something. Queensland's major project pipeline now runs to...
540 Companies in One Day. Why the Insolvency Numbers Will Look Worse Next Year.
A single corporate structure now sits inside the construction insolvency figures that will be quoted for the next twelve months. Taking it out moves the number by fourteen percentage points. On 25 August 2026, 540 construction companies entered voluntary...
QA Build Bought Its Own Cabinetry, Solar and Electrical Businesses. James Drever Calls It Removing the Roadblock
The chief executive of QA Build runs a business that owns a slice of its own supply chain, works two months ahead of site and is building its own trade college. He told the Good Builder Podcast the thinking started with a roofing shortage. Most builders answer a...
Homecorp Buys 25ha at Redbank Plains for a 193 Home Estate, on a Site First Approved for Subdivision in 2018
The land has carried a subdivision approval for eight years. Construction on the next stages starts next year. The distance between those two dates is the part of the housing pipeline builders feel most. Homecorp has paid $30 million for a 25.22 hectare site at 639...
Trade Apprentice Starts Grew 2 Per Cent This Quarter, and Only Three Trades Drove It
New NCVER figures show trade commencements are still rising, but the rate of growth has fallen from almost 18 per cent to 2 per cent across three quarters, and the number of construction trades apprentices in training dropped again. The number of people starting a...
She Built a Career in Colombia. Now She Is Helping Build Sydney’s Hospitals.
Andrea Ramirez Pertuz arrived in Australia with a civil engineering degree and a plan. Her path to working on some of Sydney's biggest hospital redevelopments offers a practical lesson in how the industry absorbs skilled migrants when the system works properly. Andrea...
Victoria’s Top Apprentice Started With a Job Ad for Antarctica
Hannah Dillimore didn't take the conventional path into the trades. She saw an ad for welders in Antarctica and thought, that's interesting. She wasn't ready for the South Pole, but the spark was lit. The 27-year-old from Melbourne's South East is now Victoria's 2026...
AWIC Awards 2026: Nominations Are Open
The Awesome Women in Construction Awards are back for their fifth year, and if you haven't paid attention before, 2026 might be the year to start. The AWIC Awards aren't just a gala night. They're one of the few places in this industry where the people doing the...
From Support Work to Sawdust: How One Northern Rivers Mum Found Her Trade.
Abbey Paxton changed careers after a horse riding accident, walked into a TAFE classroom at 30 with two kids at home, and has since renovated her first house. Her story is exactly what the construction industry needs more of. And there has never been a better time to...
Queensland Declares $1.9 Billion in Steel Projects. The Rebar Arrives in 2028.
Three projects just got a Prescribed Project declaration. It is a coordination tool with a two year clock on it, not an approval, and it does not put a single tonne of reinforcing bar on a Queensland site any sooner than 2028. Queensland has just declared three steel...
Four States Are Rewriting Building Regulation at Once. They Disagree on What the Problem Is
NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia all have building reform underway. Each has picked a different constraint to fix, and almost none of it has started yet. Four states are rewriting the rules that govern building work. What gets less attention is that...
Victoria Will Fine Falls From Height On the Spot. Enforcement Moves From Rare to Routine.
The Victorian Government says inspectors will soon be able to issue immediate fines for falls from height offences. The mechanism sitting behind that sentence is the part worth reading, because it changes how often a penalty can land, not how big it is. On Friday 18...
Trade Qualifications Will Earn the Same Visa Points as Degrees, but the Skills Assessment Queue Has Not Moved Yet
The federal government has announced that housing trades will be scored like university graduates in the skilled visa points test, and that construction will move up the visa processing queue. Neither change has been published, neither has a start date, and the step...
R U OK? Day Asks Workers to Notice When Someone Is Struggling. The Safety Code Already Requires It.
An awareness campaign sits at the bottom of the hierarchy of controls. That does not make it worthless. It makes it the check on whether everything above it is working. A safety tag is the least remarkable object on a site. A strip of weatherproof poly, a wire loop, a...
Why Looking After Your Business Is Part of Looking After Yourself
Most builders blame themselves when the pressure becomes too much. On a recent Good Builder Podcast, estimator Josh Peapoint made a different case. A lot of that pressure is built into how the business runs, not who the builder is. No builder burns out because they...
When the Business Goes Under, the Family Goes With It
Behind every insolvency statistic is a person. Usually a couple. Often a family. The construction industry talks constantly about cashflow and contracts. It almost never talks about this. In 2024, more than 3,200 construction companies in Australia entered insolvency...
The Number That Should Stop the Construction Industry in Their Tracks
There is a number that sits behind every conversation about mental health in the Australian construction industry, and it does not get said often enough. On average, a construction worker takes their own life every two days in Australia. Not per week. Every two days....
Canada Is About to Find Out Whether a Government Can Order Its Way to a Modular Industry
Modular construction has never failed on engineering. It fails on order books. Canada is about to run the largest test yet of whether guaranteed demand is the missing ingredient, and the answer matters well beyond Canada. Six federal sites across Canada are due to...
Britain’s New Building Levy Starts on 1 October. The Bill Does Not Arrive Until the Job Is Finished.
The Building Safety Levy has been years in the making and lands in ten weeks. The design detail everyone missed is when you actually pay it, and that detail changes who it hurts. From 1 October 2026, England introduces the Building Safety Levy on new residential...
New Zealand Consents Are Up 19 Per Cent While Building Work Keeps Falling. Both Numbers Are True.
The consent data says recovery. The activity data says the floor has not arrived. If you have ever tried to explain to a client why a strong pipeline does not pay this month’s wages, this is that argument with a country attached. Stats NZ recorded 39,737 new dwellings...
American Housing Starts Just Hit a Six Year Low, and the Builders Pulling Back Are Doing It on Purpose
The headline number looks like a collapse. Look closer and it is something more interesting. American builders are choosing to stop, and the reasoning behind that choice is worth understanding before conditions here ask the same question of you. US housing starts fell...
Robots on the Tools, Homes in the Factory: The Construction Revolution the World Is Already Running
Modular and prefabricated construction is a $150 billion global industry and growing at 7 percent a year. Hong Kong is mandating it on public housing. Japan is using it to offset an ageing workforce. Canada is funding it at scale. Australia is still deciding. At some...
Canada’s $25 Billion Bet: Can a Government Housing Agency Actually Build Homes?
Canada has created a new government body to act as a housing developer, backed by $25 billion and a target to double construction output. It is one of the most ambitious interventions in a Western housing market in decades. Here is what to watch. Most governments...
The New Zealand Recovery: What Surviving the Worst Construction Downturn Since 1991 Teaches Builders
New Zealand builders have just traded through what industry leaders describe as the worst recession since 1991. Some held their teams together. Some didn't. The ones who held on are now positioned differently. Here is what the evidence shows. New Zealand construction...
Japan’s Construction Time Bomb: Who Builds a Country When the Builders Are Too Old?
Japan's construction workforce is ageing faster than it can be replaced. The country is 20 years ahead of Australia on this curve. What it is doing now, and what it is failing to do, is a preview every building industry needs to watch. Japan has a way of arriving at...
Germany’s Housing Paradox: Record Demand, Collapsed Supply
Germany is running short of hundreds of thousands of homes while its construction industry reports a historic lack of orders. Understanding how the most engineering-proud economy in Europe ended up here matters for every building market. There is something deeply...
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