TLDR
Two peak construction bodies have released five voluntary principles urging government clients to fix design processes that delay infrastructure projects before a single worker arrives on site. The Australian Constructors Association and Consult Australia say unclear scope, redundant reviews and weak governance are the main culprits in a sector worth more than 7 per cent of GDP.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The delay starts before the digger arrives
In public infrastructure, the biggest drag on productivity is rarely wet concrete or broken equipment. It is paperwork, governance loops and design processes that grind projects to a halt months before a worker sets foot on site. That is the central argument behind five Design Best Practice Principles released by the Australian Constructors Association and Consult Australia through the Construction Industry Leadership Forum.[1]
The principles are aimed squarely at government clients. Their message is blunt: the inefficiency Australia's infrastructure pipeline cannot afford is being baked in at the design stage, long before construction contracts are signed.
What the industry is actually saying
ACA chief executive Peter Colacino said "Governments are under pressure to deliver more with less, but too many projects are being slowed down before a shovel hits the ground."[2] Colacino is not complaining about construction workers or materials costs. His diagnosis points to client-side dysfunction: unclear briefs, overlapping approval layers and governance structures that multiply reviews without adding value.
Colacino went further on where skilled labour is being lost. "We cannot afford to have skilled engineers tied up in layers of checking and re-checking that add little value," he said.[2] In a sector stretched thin by a multi-decade infrastructure pipeline, that is an argument about opportunity cost measured in engineer-hours.
Consult Australia chief executive Jonathan Cartledge framed the same problem from the designer's side. "Design is where the foundations of every project are set," he said.[2] Get the design process wrong and every downstream decision inherits that dysfunction, regardless of how capable the construction team is.
What the five principles actually require
The principles call for clearer project scope, fewer and more targeted design reviews, stronger governance and decision-making frameworks, earlier engagement with delivery partners, and greater use of digital collaboration tools.[2] Together, they describe a procurement culture that front-loads clarity rather than distributing ambiguity across the project lifecycle.
The push for risk-based design reviews is particularly pointed. The industry's critique is not that reviews should disappear but that they have multiplied into redundancy, consuming experienced engineers on sign-offs that provide no additional assurance. A risk-based approach would concentrate review effort where actual project risk sits, rather than applying a blanket approval layer to every design decision regardless of consequence.
Early contractor engagement is the other lever the principles push hard. Under conventional procurement, builders arrive after design is largely locked. By that point, constructability problems are expensive to fix and value-engineering opportunities have closed. Pulling delivery partners into the design process earlier is a well-understood mechanism for reducing downstream variation and cost escalation; the question is whether government clients are structurally set up to do it.
Why the sector's scale makes this matter
Construction accounts for more than 7 per cent of Australia's GDP and employs more than 1.3 million people.[3] When a sector that large loses productive time to avoidable process failures, the macroeconomic drag is real. The infrastructure pipeline spans housing, transport, energy, defence and social projects across every jurisdiction, and governments at every level are trying to do more with constrained budgets.
The ACA and Consult Australia have been working together since 2022 through the Partnership for Change initiative, publishing guidance on digital technology, model client principles and design review processes before turning attention specifically to project design.[1] The Design Best Practice Principles are the latest output of that collaboration, released through the Construction Industry Leadership Forum as an industry-wide reference point.
The document's limits
The principles carry no enforcement mechanism. They are voluntary, addressed to public and private clients, designers and delivery teams alike, and their effectiveness depends entirely on whether government procurement agencies choose to adopt them.[1] There is no regulatory hook, no penalty for non-compliance and no requirement that any jurisdiction sign on.
That is not unusual for industry-led reform documents, but it does place a ceiling on impact. The principles describe a best-practice destination; the distance between that destination and the daily reality of state government procurement offices is not addressed in the document. Whether the Construction Industry Leadership Forum intends to follow up with jurisdiction-specific engagement or benchmarking of government client performance is not said.
What the release does establish is a formal, jointly owned position from two of the sector's most prominent peak bodies: the problem of infrastructure delay is not primarily a construction problem. Peter Colacino and Jonathan Cartledge put that framing on the record in August 2026, giving the industry a reference point for conversations that will have to follow with Treasury officials, infrastructure ministers and procurement agencies if the principles are to move from paper to practice.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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Vikram Singh writes about banking. He follows where money actually moves, from the strategy set in head office to what changes on a customer's phone.
