Vista Built runs with three people in Victoria's Macedon Ranges and has a year of work ahead while much of the market waits. On The Good Builder Podcast, Mitch Thompson explained the decisions behind that. Plenty of builders are describing a quiet market right now....
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...
A manager fell two storeys at 23 and lost his job before the ambulance reached him. What he says about the years afterwards lands on the same point as this year’s campaign theme, and on the paperwork residential builders are still missing. Safe Work Australia has set...
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...
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 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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Rebecca Askin and Alex Harris on the low cost fixes that decide who stays, and the Queensland rules that now sit behind them. The interventions that keep good people in construction are mostly small, cheap and already inside a builder's control. That was the through...
Josh Tyrrell signed his franchise at 29 with no intention of becoming a volume builder. A decade on he has 18 staff, drafting and accounting in house, and a second office in the works. Josh Tyrrell was 28, building his own first house, and entirely uninterested when...
Rod Gibbs has spent his whole career inside three construction businesses. He has just been appointed General Manager of Construction at Bold Living. On The Good Builder Podcast he set out the thinking he is bringing with him, including an argument most builders have...
Phil Del Titto from WD Constructions spent four years as an apprentice carpenter. He came out qualified, handy with the tools and ready to subcontract. Then he sat down to write his first invoice and realised he had no idea how to do it. "I wrote a Word document and I...
Most builders think of their business as something they build. Foundations, frames, roofs, teams. What Aaron Applefield puts to them is a different question. What are you bringing to it? Applefield sat down with The Good Builder Podcast for a conversation that started...
The Good Builder’s Top 100 report found one franchise network added builds in a year the market lost them. On the podcast this week, James Stroud gives an explanation that has almost nothing to do with the market. Queensland’s hundred largest residential builders...
A Gold Coast husband-and-wife painting crew has a name for what builders pay when a trade cuts a corner. They call it the FAFO tax, and their argument is that the cheapest quote on paper is almost never the cheapest job in the end. Brendan Kelly has been painting for...
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...
Thirty years of reputation. Thirty-five homes a year. His own name on the door. Brad Acheson had built something most builders only dream about. Then he decided it still wasn't enough. Brad Acheson had his builder's licence at 20 years and 11 months. He was born and...
Recruitment specialist Julie Bolitho has watched the building industry from the inside since she was sixteen. Her advice ahead of the 2032 demand surge is simple. Start growing your own people now. Last updated: 16 June 2026 Most builders treat recruitment as...
Mathew Vanstyn built a 15-person patio and renovation business by knowing exactly how big he wanted it to be. His refusal to chase scale is a lesson in risk management most builders learn the hard way. Most builder failure stories share a common thread. The business...
Liquidators have a reputation that keeps builders awake at night. According to Chris from Jirsch Sutherland, that fear is based on a misconception. His first question is never about closing a business down. Nobody grows up wanting to be a liquidator. Chris, a Partner...
Christchurch builder Dan Saunders has spent three decades building homes that perform well beyond the code. His message for Australian builders is simple: the code is the floor, not the ceiling. There is a line Dan Saunders uses when he talks about the New Zealand...
PrimeBuild Recruitment founder Luke Cotterell spent more than a decade on tools, in offices and on sites before he ever placed a candidate. That background is exactly why the builders he works with keep calling him back. There is a version of a recruiter that...
At a launch event in Hamilton last night, the team behind The Gallery explained how a two-year site acquisition, a decision to retain all retail, and a building designed around a specific buyer all point to the same long-term position. Racecourse Road has been waiting...
Over two decades in the trade, a custom home operation running seven-figure projects, and a brand new venture into pharmaceutical-grade clean rooms. Rod Frampton is the kind of builder most people in the industry talk about but rarely sit across from. He joined The...
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...
Three builder insolvencies on his very first development. An engineering background transplanted into residential construction. A decade in the classroom. Nagy Mourad has seen this industry from every angle, and what he sees concerns him. Not the numbers. The...
Philip Livingston on aged care home modifications, NDIS compliance, and why duty of care is not optional in this sector. Philip Livingston leads with people. Before he mentions a single measurement, standard, or schedule, he talks about privilege. He mentions the...
A young WA carpenter who has competed on the world stage and addressed Parliament is doing more for apprentice recruitment than most industry campaigns. He just does not see it that way. Lewis Italiano had never been on a plane before WorldSkills. That changed when...
AVID Property Group has appointed Anthony Demiris as its new Chief Executive Officer, with the change effective immediately. The appointment follows the retirement of Cameron Holt, who has led the residential development and land lease communities group for close to...
Tom Sachs did not follow a straight line into building. Fifteen years later, he runs one of the more respected franchise operations in regional Queensland. The path in between is worth paying attention to. Tom Sachs started his working life lopping trees. Not an...
Why every day without a trade on site is costing you more than you think There is a number most builders never calculate. They know their material costs. They know their labour rates. They track their progress claims and watch their margins. But the cost of a site...
Most builders are trained to chase every lead. Ash Turner of Glenvill Homes is building a retail business on the opposite principle. And the numbers are backing him up. The job you don't take is the job you don't regret There's a version of builder sales that most...
Building biologist Zara D'Cotta spent years searching for a home that wouldn't make her sick. What she discovered changed how she works and it should change how builders build. Most builders care deeply about the homes they deliver. They obsess over details, push back...
Most builders know when something is off with their sales process. Prelims that go nowhere. Clients who ghost after getting a quote. Contracts that fall over in the final stages. The assumption is usually that it is a market problem, a client quality problem, or bad...
The Willow Grove Homes director sits down with The Good Builder Podcast to talk about granny flats, growing up in a family business, navigating a male-dominated industry, and what it actually means to be a good builder. Farah Drake does not describe herself as...
The Avid Property Group executive returns to The Good Builder Podcast to talk rising costs, the land crisis, succession, and the quiet discipline that separates the best builders from everyone else. There are guests you have on the podcast because they are...
Most people who think about modular construction picture the walls, the roof, the fitout. What they rarely think about is what sits underneath all of it. John Davis thinks about it constantly. Davis is the director of MMC Modular and the creator of ModFloor, a light...
Josh has worked with more than 56 builders across Australia in the past 12 months. He did it almost entirely through word of mouth. No paid ads. No big marketing budget. Just a reputation built quietly over 15 years in the industry. That reputation rests on one thing:...
Technology is moving fast. The builders who lean in now will be the ones still standing when it catches up. There is a lot of noise around AI right now. Every second LinkedIn post. Every conference keynote. Every software vendor promising to revolutionise your...
In an industry often dominated by speed, cost pressure and constant change, some of the strongest stories still begin the old-fashioned way: with trade knowledge passed down through family, years on site, and a deep respect for doing the job properly. That is the...
When Aaron started The Good Builder, he expected the hard part would be building an audience. Instead, one of his first lessons came from a quiet meeting in a Brisbane café with someone who had spent decades inside Australia’s timber and forestry sector. That meeting...
When Aaron welcomed Bec Askin onto The Good Builder Podcast, he did not frame it as a typical career interview. He framed it as a deliberate challenge to the way the industry often talks about leadership, construction pathways, and what “success” looks like in...
Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour is not where most Australian builders would expect to take a tour of a residential construction business. Yet that is exactly how The Good Builder podcast episode begins, with Stonewood Homes general manager Gregg Somerville walking past the...
Nicola Scott does not talk like someone chasing attention. In an industry where the loudest voices often win the room, she has built her reputation the opposite way, through calm, consistency, and an ability to sit with people when things are going wrong. That...
When Australia talks about housing, the conversation usually circles the same pressure points: supply targets, construction costs, interest rates, planning delays, and whether first home buyers can still get a foot in the door. In today’s episode of The Good Builder...
In an industry where long hours and thin margins still feel normal, Tasmanian builder and educator Kyle Zanetto is pushing a different message: builders can run calmer, more profitable businesses without losing craftsmanship. Zanetto, founder of Zanetto Builders and...
When most people talk about business growth, they reach for the obvious levers: more leads, more staff, more machinery, more margin. In manufacturing, especially, the conversation tends to centre on output, efficiency, and “getting things out the door”. But on a...
When Aaron sat down with Hayden Ashton at the Avia Homes office, the conversation does not begin with volume numbers, growth targets, or glossy branding. It starts with something far more foundational: how a person becomes the kind of leader an industry can trust....
When Candice Webb talks about leadership, it does not sound like theory. It sounds like someone who has been in the thick of it, made the hard calls, taken the late night phone calls, and still shown up the next morning with enough energy to steady a team that is...
On paper, Ryan O’Leary is a tiler from Bribie Island. In reality, he is the kind of operator the industry keeps saying it wants more of. Proud of his craft. Protective of his reputation. Allergic to shortcuts. And somehow still able to keep the job site light enough...
When Aaron opened today’s episode of The Good Builder Podcast by admitting he felt “a little bit nervous”, it was not theatre. His guest, Peter Wood, is one of those industry figures whose name carries weight long before the formal introduction lands. Wood is General...
In residential construction, “we just need more leads” is still one of the most common sentences you hear. It makes sense. When a builder has wages to cover, supervisors to keep busy, and a pipeline that feels a bit shaky, the instinct is to chase volume. More...
When Dayne Hutchinson joins a call from Umeå, he’s not doing it from a comfy co-working space. It’s just past midnight. He’s near the Arctic Circle. It’s around minus 15 degrees outside. In the depths of winter, the sun barely shows up, rising late and dropping away a...
In an industry often judged by its worst headlines, it is easy to overlook the quiet operators who are lifting standards from the ground up. Not with slogans.Not with shortcuts.But with discipline, systems, and a deep respect for people. That is why Core Painting...
The Good Builder Podcast today Az sits down with Dr Yannick Van Heeden, a mindset and leadership specialist (and founder of Impaktr) whose work sits at the intersection of behavioural science, ancient wisdom, and real world performance. It is the first time The Good...
A Founder Who Saw The Problem First-Hand When Mark Corkery founded Onsite Scanning Solutions, it was not a business play. It was a response to the same frustrations builders face every day. After years working in scaffolding and design, Mark saw how often engineering...
LATEST NEWS
Two Defence sites near the Adelaide CBD are moving toward housing. What was announced on Tuesday is a negotiation, a relocation timetable and a preliminary plan, and each one runs on its own clock. The Commonwealth and South Australian governments announced on Tuesday...
The state government will pay up to $4 million to restart Austral Bricks' Cardup plant. It adds a second producer to a market on allocation, but the plant returning is the one that closed, and new bricks are a 2027 story. The Western Australian Government will pay up...
Four of Japan’s largest building groups now own, or are acquiring, some of the best known names in Australian construction. The ownership is the headline. The capabilities travelling with it are what will change how the industry works. In the space of two years,...
Total dwelling approvals fell 6.1 per cent in August. Underneath that number, detached house approvals climbed to 10,885, the strongest month since August 2021, while townhouse and apartment approvals fell away sharply. The headline number from the Australian Bureau...