{"id":6720,"date":"2026-11-02T04:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T04:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/?post_type=resource&p=6720"},"modified":"2026-11-02T06:05:58","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T06:05:58","slug":"inside-hubexos-construction-outlook-leadership-forum-au","status":"publish","type":"resource","link":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/resource\/inside-hubexos-construction-outlook-leadership-forum-au\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside our Construction Outlook Leadership Forum – Sydney, Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Construction<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Australia’s Construction Outlook 2027<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday 20 October, Hubexo hosted its Construction Outlook Leadership Forum at QT Sydney. The closed-door session brought industry leaders together for a preview of the Construction Outlook for 2027<\/a>.

The afternoon opened with a presentation of Part 1 of the report by Ashleigh Porter, President APAC at Hubexo. A panel followed, drawn from development, architecture, construction and industry advocacy. Across the room, one message held: Australia’s pipeline is deep, but turning it into construction is the real test for 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The presentation: Opportunity is not the same as activity<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ashleigh set the tone early. “The challenge for our industry isn’t necessarily a lack of work”, she said. “The bigger question is how much of that pipeline can realistically move into construction.”

The numbers back that up. The value of new project proposals slipped just 1% in Q2 2026, with energy and resources making up around 36% of it. Few projects are falling out: national deferrals dropped to 1.5% and abandonments held at 1.3%. Victoria is the exception, where residential abandonment reached 5%.

Commencements are forecast to rise sharply between Q3 2026 and Q2 2027, led by energy and resources (36.8%) and industrial, infrastructure and transport (25.6%). NSW\/ACT and Queensland account for around two-thirds of forecast commencement value.

The catch is capacity. Infrastructure Australia forecasts a shortfall on public infrastructure resources alone of nearly 300,000 workers by 2027. In the annual Sentiment Survey, for builders, holding onto talent jumped 19 points to 60% as a people challenge. As Ashleigh put it, a hiring problem has become a retention problem.

Sentiment is steady rather than bullish. 42% of respondents expect more work in 2027, 46% expect about the same and 12% expect less. Developers have also shortened their planning horizon, with almost half now looking just 6 to 12 months ahead.

Ashleigh closed with five considerations for 2027:

1. Follow the sectors with momentum.
2. Watch NSW and Queensland, but plan locally.
3. Prioritise project viability over pipeline volume.
4. Protect delivery capacity.
5. Build agility into your business planning.

“The businesses that perform strongest in 2027 won’t necessarily be those chasing the most work”, she said. “They’ll be those that understand where the right opportunities are, position themselves early and have the people, partnerships and technology to deliver with confidence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The panel<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ashleigh then moderated a discussion with four contributors to this year’s report:

– Fabrizio Perilli, Managing Director, Perifa and Versatile Group
– Liz Westgarth, Managing Director, Hassell
– Kunjan Ganatra, Group Chief Executive Officer, McNab Group
– Peter Colacino, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Constructors Association<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Market conditions: Uncertainty, and a different map<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Asked to describe the market today, the panel agreed on one word. “For me, the word is uncertainty”, Liz said. “Work that we would have been engaged on as a full commission is now broken up into chunks, and there might be pauses and delays in between. That makes it quite difficult when you’re running a people-based business.”

The picture varies sharply by state. Liz described Queensland as “going gangbusters” but talent-constrained, with NSW flat and Victoria unlikely to bounce back quickly. Kunjan, whose business is largely Queensland-based, noted that the Olympics make up less than 10% of the volume coming through. Infrastructure, hospitals and housing make up the rest, all drawing on the same labour and supply chains.

Peter urged the room to look beyond the eastern seaboard. He pointed to defence, with around $30 billion of work at the Osborne naval shipyard in Adelaide alone, and to growth in the north and west. “We need to think about the full potential of the pipeline in a different way”, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feasibility: Delivery certainty is the new currency<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For Fabrizio, what separates the projects that stack up from those that don’t is confidence in delivery. “The banks and the funders these days are really looking hard at delivery certainty”, he said.

Residential feasibility remains the toughest. He gave the example of a site one metro stop from the Perth CBD, where apartments selling at $12,500 to $13,000 per square metre still don’t stack up. Kunjan agreed that funders are “asking more questions than ever” about who is building for a developer.

Fabrizio also commented on the accumulated weight of regulation. “Every individual piece of regulation, when assessed in isolation, sort of makes sense”, he said. “Then you put it together and it’s an absolute disaster.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Design: Problem-solving under pressure<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Liz pushed back on the idea that tighter feasibility is new territory for architects. “Architecture as a profession is all about problem solving. It’s essentially what we’ve always done”, she said. “A core part of our job is to listen to clients, understand what value means to them and balance that complex set of criteria.”

What has changed is the pace of AI. “The change and pace of AI in the design space in the last six to 12 months alone is enormous”, Liz said. Hassell is using it to speed up reporting and to communicate ideas to clients more compellingly. The aim is to free people for the work that needs their skill, expertise and judgement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Construction: Back to first principles<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kunjan was clear about what builders need for projects to succeed. “Contractors need to not be ashamed to make a margin”, he said. “Our job is to take risk. We’re not worried about risk, but we’ve got to work together.”

With Queensland construction costs escalating, he said McNab will be selective about the work it takes on. “We don’t need to play a race to the bottom.” His bigger concern is the skill level of the labour available, not only the number of workers, because lower-skilled labour drives more defects and rework.

He argued that the industry’s focus on modern methods of construction is too narrow. “It’s actually got to be about modern methods of delivery, from end to end”, he said, from planning approvals through to handover and defects. His advice for a stop-start market is transparency. “There is a lot of opportunity in the market right now”, he said. “But we’re having to get back to first principles and work very collaboratively. It’s a bit of old-school building at the moment, which is kind of exciting.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Productivity: Regulation, scale and skill mix<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Peter reframed the productivity debate. The decline is real in residential and small-scale building, he said, while major project construction broadly tracks the wider economy. “Since the invention of the mobile phone and mobile internet, it takes longer to build a house”, he said, pointing to planning approvals, licensing and a lack of national harmonisation.

Scale makes the difference. Organisations with scale can invest in training, retention and new technology, and they get fundamentally different outcomes.

He also challenged how the industry counts its skills gap. The Electrical Trades Union estimates Australia is 70,000 electricians short of what the data centre and renewable energy boom needs. “We need to think differently about our skill mix”, Peter said. Not every task on those projects requires a fully licensed electrician. Peter described a solar farm on a hilly site, where tracked robots installed the posts and panels and a person only needed to plug them in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking to 2027: From talking to doing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To close, Ashleigh asked each panellist what gives them confidence about 2027, and what the industry needs to get right.

For Liz, the two are linked. “We’re going to get the best outcomes when we work across industry: designers, developers and contractors bringing the best minds to problem solving”, she said. “I still think it’s going to be pretty tough, but I’m relatively optimistic about 2027.”

Fabrizio expects old-school fundamentals to rise to the top, with a renewed focus on time and productivity. “Time is money”, he said, noting that delays add escalation and interest costs that benefit nobody. He called for greater collaboration between government and private industry.

Peter said the industry must engage openly and transparently on industrial relations. He was more optimistic than the survey data about government’s role, pointing to the National Construction Strategy and the National Construction Industry Forum. The forum’s recommendations run all the way to nationally standardised collaborative contracts.

Kunjan had the final word. “We need to move from talking to actually getting out there and doing”, he said. “Our industry has been through cycles before, and we’ve always come out. We have incredible talent in this industry. We know what we need to do. We just need to start getting on with it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read the full report<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Construction Outlook for 2027 combines LeadManager<\/a> pipeline data, a nationwide Sentiment Survey and in-depth interviews with industry leaders. It tracks every major sector and state, with commencement forecasts to Q2 2027.

Explore the full pipeline data and insights in Hubexo’s Construction Outlook for 2027. Download the report now.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia’s Construction Outlook 2027 On Tuesday 20 October, Hubexo hosted its Construction Outlook Leadership Forum at QT Sydney. The closed-door session brought industry leaders together for a preview of the Construction Outlook for 2027. The afternoon opened with a presentation of Part 1 of the report by Ashleigh Porter, President APAC at Hubexo. A panel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":6721,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"resource-category":[21],"class_list":["post-6720","resource","type-resource","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","resource-category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource\/6720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/resource"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource\/6720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6740,"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource\/6720\/revisions\/6740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"resource-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apac.hubexo.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-category?post=6720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}