For two years the national prefab certification scheme has been a line item in budget papers and a promise in communiques. The ABCB has now put draft rules, a draft NCC definition and an economic analysis on the table. This is the round where the detail gets decided....
McNab has moved The Tannery from a funding announcement to an active build in West End. Beneath the price tag sits the detail that matters to builders: a 156-year-old industrial building being kept and worked into a new residential project. McNab has broken ground on...
Michael Hopkins has laid bricks across the UK, Germany and Australia. His take on how we build homes here is uncomfortable, but it is worth hearing out. Michael Hopkins has laid bricks on three continents. He did his apprenticeship in the UK in the late 1980s, worked...
A Pryda engineer says the reason Australia keeps missing its housing targets is not skills or funding. It is that we still build every home as a one-off. His fix is to build them like cars. Australia has spent years talking about how to build more homes faster. Bigger...
The state has stopped describing the factory and started shopping for the company to run it. The detail worth reading is what NSW is prepared to put on the table to get one here. NSW has moved from intent to invitation. On 2 July, the Minns Government opened an...
Half the imported timber the government tested could not be traced to its source. For builders, the problem is not just where the wood comes from. It is that the paperwork meant to prove it has stopped meaning much. Here is the part that should stop any builder in...
The New South Wales government is no longer just talking about modular construction. It is preparing to build the factory itself. On Sunday the government confirmed that Tuesday's state budget will include funding to set up a partnership with a private manufacturer to...
As local manufacturers look offshore to scale up, Vietnam is being positioned as Australia's next modular partner. For builders, the real story is what offshore production does to cost, lead times and who controls quality. Australia cannot build homes fast enough....
Most of the housing debate in Australia comes down to a few familiar levers. Interest rates. Migration. Planning approvals. Tax settings. All of them matter. But there is a number that gets far less airtime, and it may be the most important one of all. Over the past...
A charitable trust founded in Christchurch in 2015 has quietly become one of the most effective knowledge-sharing platforms in Australasian construction. Here is what it is, how it works, and why Australian builders should be paying attention. Most movements in the...
A Landcom development in Sydney's north-west has become the first on-ground test of the NSW Government's push to mainstream modern methods of construction. The results will matter well beyond this site. Nine two-storey, three-bedroom terraces are being built in...
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...
A Melbourne developer-builder has delivered architecturally designed four-bedroom homes in 90 days, selling out in three weeks. It is a proof of concept the industry has been waiting for. Building a townhouse in Australia typically takes somewhere between 10 and 12...
FTMA CEO Kirsten Gentle has spent her career building a community around one of the most important sectors in Australian housing. Her message to builders is simple: you are closer to a solution than you think. If you had never heard of the Frame and Truss...
The Cook Government's Housing Innovation Fund is betting on prefabrication and factory-built components to close the gap between housing targets and housing delivery. Here is what the investment means for the industry. Western Australia just made one of the most...
Something has shifted in what Australians believe they can afford to build. Keyword data across Google's Australian market tells the story in numbers. Search volume for modular home builders, container home builders, shipping container home builders, duplex builders,...
As passivehaus becomes mainstream marketing language, a critical misconception is taking hold. Builders need to understand the gap before their clients discover it for them. Passivehaus has had a remarkable rise in the Australian residential market. A concept that was...
Australia’s construction sector is under pressure. Costs remain elevated. Skilled labour is tight. Carbon reduction targets are no longer optional. And traditional construction methods are struggling to deliver projects at the speed and certainty developers require....
In a quiet suburban street in Warrnambool, one home is stopping traffic. Not because of size alone. Not because of price. But because it looks like it belongs in a fantasy novel. Complete with stone walls, a keep, gargoyles and even a moat, this three-storey...
For decades, autonomy in heavy equipment has largely been a mining story. Remote haul trucks in the Pilbara, autonomous drills in Chile, machines operating where people simply cannot. But in January 2026, at CES in Las Vegas, Caterpillar made it clear that autonomy is...
Australia’s residential construction pipeline showed a strong late year resurgence in November 2025, with new data revealing a sharp lift in dwelling approvals driven almost entirely by apartments, townhouses and higher density housing. According to the latest release...
Australia has quietly become one of the most interesting places in the world to build a house. Not the biggest. Not the flashiest. But some of the most thoughtful, design led and environmentally tuned homes anywhere on the planet. The latest sign that the world is...
Australia’s housing crisis has no shortage of proposed solutions. Planning reform, land releases, density changes and funding incentives are all part of the conversation. But one approach is gaining renewed attention from governments and industry alike: modular and...
For much of its history in Australia, modular construction has carried an image problem. For builders, clients and even regulators, modular was often synonymous with temporary structures. Site sheds. Mining accommodation. Demountable classrooms. Functional buildings...
The modular building sector in Australia is growing rapidly, but one of the biggest challenges for modular builders remains visibility. Modular builders often produce high quality homes, granny flats, tiny homes, site offices and other prefabricated structures, yet...
Australia’s construction sector is about to experience a shift that many in the industry have been waiting decades for. Love Reinforcing, a specialist engineering and project-delivery company, has announced a landmark partnership with Danish automation firm GMT...
In Australia’s tight residential market, one often overlooked asset is quite literally above our heads. The unused rooftop and air-space over existing buildings is emerging as a serious development opportunity. It is not just about adding a level or two; it is about...
By TGB Editorial It looks more like something from a sci fi film than a suburban job site, but according to its creators, a spider like robot called Charlotte could soon be building homes on Australian soil. Unveiled this week at the International Astronautical...
By The Good Builder Editorial Team Building Faster, Smarter, and Fairer At a time when the building industry faces acute labour shortages and mounting pressure to deliver more homes, Western Australia’s latest social housing initiative is showing what can happen when...
What began as a fringe concept is now gaining momentum. Prefabricated construction, long viewed as a niche reserved for remote projects or temporary housing, is rapidly becoming one of Australia’s most promising pathways to faster, smarter, and more sustainable...
Australia’s construction industry is under pressure. Labour shortages, rising material costs and the push for faster delivery have created the perfect environment for alternative building methods to take hold. Yet while many speak of prefabrication as a radical shift,...
When you sit down with someone like Anthony Jenkin, founder of Outlier, it doesn’t take long before you realise you’re not just talking about design, you’re talking about the future of how homes should be built. Anthony’s journey into building wasn’t a straight line....
On a recent episode of The Good Builder Podcast we sat down with Shane Lutze, founder of Cresco Australia, to unpack how his team has become the go-to engineering partner for builders across the country. The conversation, recorded fresh off the back of Ryse...
A Walkthrough of the Future In mid-September, the NSW Government will throw open the doors to one of the state’s first modular housing showcase sites, giving locals a rare chance to walk through a full-scale prefabricated home. The open day, scheduled for Friday 19...
Australia’s housing crisis is colliding with another national challenge: the future of the Whyalla Steelworks. Construction-technology company PT Blink is proposing a solution that could tackle both, shifting multi-storey construction away from concrete and toward...
Technology has always been part of the building story. From the first use of steel in bridges to the widespread adoption of prefabrication, each leap has left its mark on how we design, construct, and maintain the built environment. Today, we stand at another turning...
A Quiet Revolution in Construction In a Queensland factory, two workers recently assembled a light-gauge steel floor system in just three hours. Traditionally, that same task would take a team of skilled welders an entire day. This is Modfloor in action, one of the...
Summary: Australia’s housing shortfall continues to grow, but new partnerships between China and Australia in prefabricated construction could provide a faster, more efficient way to scale up housing. With billions already invested in prefab imports and a wave of...
In a time of rising costs, labour shortages and increasing customer expectations, the builders who will thrive are those who embrace collaboration not just in their teams, but across their entire supply chain. One of the biggest shifts happening across the Tier 1 and...
What if you could design a home from your laptop…and have it built, delivered, and assembled at a fraction of today's build costs? At The Good Builder, we’ll always keep a close eye on developments that could reshape the way homes are conceived and constructed and how...
Not everyone’s talking about passive design, air tightness, or thermal bridging over a beer but for those who are working developing the future built environment and the next generation of Australian homes, it’s starting to matter. More and more Aussie builders are...
Do you remember when the cost of laying a brick during COVID jumped from $1.20 to $3 a brick - and that’s when you could get a brickie at all. That was a simple case of supply and demand - but a West Australian building company reckons it’s discovered a solution to...
The time for pre-fab homes may have finally arrived. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has become the first major bank to make a significant move to capture a share of the quickly growing offsite construction industry. Later this quarter, the bank will allow...
LATEST NEWS
The industry asked the government to model the housing impact of its SMSF borrowing ban. The government didn't. So builders went and counted the contracts themselves. The numbers are now on the table. Back in June, the question was theoretical. The Housing Industry...
Victoria has launched the country's first long-form prefabrication qualification. The more useful story is what the paperwork trail says about how slowly training follows the work. Last Thursday, federal and Victorian ministers stood at Melbourne Polytechnic's...
The most significant overhaul of Victoria's security of payment regime in two decades commenced in April. It reaches backwards into contracts signed years ago, and most of what it changed works in favour of the party trying to get paid. Most legislative change gives...
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...