Perth builder IQ Construction expects the brick squeeze to run for at least another year, and sees brick shifting from structural wall to finish. The state’s own spending suggests the government is backing both outcomes.

Most of the coverage of Western Australia’s brick shortage has been about supply. Who makes the bricks, how many, and when more arrive.

One Perth builder is asking a different question. Not when bricks come back, but whether the way WA builds homes comes back with them.

IQ Construction, an Armadale based builder, has set out its view in an updated guide to the WA brick shortage for people building in the state. The reading is blunt. General manager Dwayne Ballast says the shortage is an issue for the next 12 months at a minimum, and that clients need to move to brick veneer or a fully framed home rather than wait.

That is a builder speaking to its own clients, and it should be read that way. But the timeline lines up closely with the official one. And it raises a question every WA builder is going to have to answer over the next two years.

The shortage now reaches the brick nobody chooses

Midland Brick, owned by BGC, is the state’s only major producer. BGC has said allocation began phasing in from 1 October, with each account given defined delivery timeframes and volumes.

Face brick colours were the first pressure point. As we reported when allocation extended to maxi bricks, the internal utility brick is now in the queue too. That is the brick that carries the structure in a double brick house, and nobody picks it for how it looks.

IQ’s contracts manager, Brent Muilenburg, frames the practical problem well. The issue is not whether a brick exists in the range. It is whether the selected brick can be supplied inside the build window.

Miss the walling stage and the delay rolls forward. Roof, electrical and internal trades start later, and the completion date moves even if everything after walling runs to plan.

Relief for WA builders is a 2027 event, and it builds slowly

The WA Government’s September announcement sets out the timeline in its own milestones. Up to $4 million to restart Austral Bricks’ Cardup plant: $3 million upfront for recommissioning, $500,000 if the plant resumes operations by March 2027, and a further $500,000 if it delivers 17 million Maxibricks within 12 months of restarting.

The government expects the restart to lift state brick production by about 10 to 15 per cent. Midland Brick is also expanding capacity at South Guildford and Middle Swan.

Read the incentive schedule against IQ’s forecast. If Cardup restarts on time and hits its full year target, the full benefit lands in early 2028. A builder saying 12 months at a minimum is not being pessimistic. It is reading the government’s own dates.

Demand has not stood still either. Since Cardup was mothballed in April 2023, the government says WA housing commencements have grown to more than 24,200 homes, including around 19,500 detached homes, up more than 50 per cent.

The government is funding both ways to build a house

The same announcement points to something builders tend to miss. Alongside the Cardup money, the state cites $49 million in Housing Innovation Fund grants covering framing and roof truss production, modular homes and housing components, plus $48 million for two advanced manufacturing facilities for prefabricated apartments.

The Housing Innovation Fund recipients list includes an automated timber framing project at Westim worth $1,829,781. Recipients put in a matched contribution of 50 per cent on top of their grant.

So public money is going into restoring double brick supply and into scaling the alternative, at the same time. That is a reasonable hedge for a government. It also means the market is not going to settle the question for builders. Each business will have to settle it for itself.

The shortage has a date on it. The question about how WA builds does not.

IQ Construction expects brick to move from structure to finish

IQ’s two year view is the part of its guide worth sitting with. The company expects brick to become a feature material more often than the default structural wall. Brick veneer becomes more common, and steel and timber framing become a normal part of residential work in WA rather than the exception.

IQ points to its own double storey project with a framed upper level as an example of how that already looks on the ground. Brick is still there. It is just doing a different job.

That shift is easy to describe as a material swap. It is not. As we found when we looked at what moving off double brick involves, every serious alternative runs through a frame, a bracing design, a fresh energy assessment and a different set of trades.

Definition: Double brick and brick veneer

Double brick uses two leaves of masonry with a cavity between them, and the inner leaf carries the structure. Brick veneer uses a timber or steel frame as the structure, with a single leaf of brick as the external skin. Both can look the same from the street. They are built, engineered and sequenced differently.

There is a real counterweight. The government notes WA has by far the highest proportion of new double brick homes in the country. Buyer expectation, resale perception and the depth of the bricklaying workforce do not change on a 12 month cycle.

On a signed contract, a wall system change is a variation

Timing is where this gets expensive. The Home Building Contracts Act 1991 applies to fixed price home building contracts between $7,500 and $500,000. A variation has to be in writing, set out its terms and cost, be dated and signed by both parties, and a copy must reach the owner before the varied work starts.

Rise and fall clauses are prohibited, so the agreed price is meant to be fixed. Moving a client from double brick to veneer after signing is not a quick swap. It is a priced, signed change, often with new engineering and a new energy rating behind it, and it sits inside how construction contracts handle variations.

That is why IQ treats brick selection as an early procurement decision rather than an aesthetic one. The wall system question is cheapest to answer before the contract is signed, and most expensive once the slab is down.

The decision is about capability, not just the next job

Seen from the builder’s side, there are two bets on the table.

Builders staying fully double brick are betting that Cardup restarts on time, that Midland’s expansion lands, and that allocation eases before it changes what clients expect.

Builders qualifying a framed or veneer system are betting that allocation lasts long enough to shift those expectations, and that the work to get engineering, energy ratings and trades lined up pays back beyond the shortage.

Both are defensible. What the current market does not reward is having no second option ready when a client’s brick will not arrive in time.

The Good Builder Take

IQ Construction is making a commercial case to its own clients, and it builds in steel framing, so its view is not neutral.

But the useful part of its argument does not depend on that. The government’s dates support a 12 month horizon, and the government’s spending is backing brick and framing at once. For WA builders, that turns a supply problem into a strategy question.

Where this leaves WA builders

The supply side has a timetable. March 2027 for Cardup, early 2028 for its full first year of Maxibricks.

The bigger question IQ raises has no timetable at all. If brick becomes the finish rather than the structure, that is a change in how Western Australia builds homes, and it will be decided by builders and their clients over the next two years, one contract at a time, not by a kiln restart.

We will keep tracking brick supply and the WA housing pipeline. Subscribe to our weekly eNewsletter for the next update, and tell us how your business is handling allocation.

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Last updated: 4 November 2026

General Information Only. This article provides general information about conditions in the Australian construction industry. It does not take into account your particular circumstances and is not legal, financial or professional advice. Figures cited are current as at the date of publication and may be revised by their issuing bodies. You should obtain your own advice before acting on anything in this article.

Author: TGB Editorial