Australia’s Construction Sector Faces a Productivity Imperative
As Australia’s construction pipeline begins to stabilise heading into 2026, the industry is entering a critical transition period. While project activity is expected to lift gradually, the sector remains under pressure from tight margins, skills shortages, rising delivery costs and heightened scrutiny around value for money.
Recent commentary responding to the Queensland Productivity Commission’s final report, reinforced a reality many across the industry already recognise: productivity has been declining for years, and structural inefficiencies are undermining performance across projects of all sizes. Poor risk allocation, fragmented processes and adversarial behaviours continue to inflate costs and delay outcome
Pipeline Growth Alone Won’t Fix Performance
While government-led reform around procurement, standard contracts and risk sharing is essential, productivity is not something that can be fixed by policy alone. For contractors, consultants and owners alike, real improvement still happens where projects are delivered — on site and in the day-to-day workflows that support them.
The Construction Outlook 2026 points to a cautiously improving pipeline, with project proposals rising through late 2025 and commencements expected to increase progressively across residential, infrastructure, energy and resources sectors. Importantly, this recovery is uneven, with projects coming online at different times and under varying commercial conditions.
“New projects offer the lowest-risk moment to reset workflows before inefficiencies become embedded.”
Why New Projects Are the Lowest-Risk Moment for Change
In this environment, one thing is becoming clear: new projects represent the lowest-risk opportunity to improve how construction work actually gets done.
Once a project is underway, introducing new systems or changing established processes can be disruptive and costly. By contrast, early-stage projects provide a clean starting point to reset operational workflows before inefficiencies, workarounds and manual processes become embedded.
Across the industry, more organisations are adopting a pragmatic, project-first approach to improvement — trialling better workflows on individual projects, measuring their impact on productivity and risk, and scaling only where value is clearly demonstrated.
Improving Productivity Through Better Operational Workflows
Operational processes such as progress claims, approvals and payment management are one area under increasing focus. Manual, spreadsheet-driven workflows remain common and absorb significant time across project teams, finance functions and subcontractors alike.
Digital platforms such as Payapps are increasingly being introduced at project commencement to address these challenges. By standardising progress claims workflows, improving transparency and supporting statutory payment requirements, teams can assess whether better processes translate into faster decisions, stronger compliance and improved cashflow certainty — before expanding them more broadly.
“Trial at project level. Prove the value. Scale with confidence.”
Delivering Better Outcomes Starts Before Construction Begins
As the industry looks ahead to 2026, the opportunity is not just to deliver more work — but to deliver it better. Productivity improvement starts long before construction begins, with early decisions about how projects will operate day to day.
New projects offer a rare chance to reset, learn and establish better ways of working that can scale as confidence grows — supporting stronger outcomes across the entire construction ecosystem.
