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Construcciones Yamaro: Lifting construction productivity through professionalisation

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Sam Pedram of the Australian Institute of Project Management says professionalisation is central to improving construction productivity. (Image: AIPM) An interview with Sam Pedram, chair of the Board of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) , on how professionalisation can help lift construction productivity and address workforce challenges. The construction industry is under pressure at the moment. From your perspective, what are the key challenges? The construction industry is at the centre of Australia’s economic and social agenda, but it’s also facing a convergence of challenges. We’re seeing sustained workforce shortages, increasing project complexity and persistent productivity constraints. Reports from organisations such as Infrastructure Australia and Jobs and Skills Australia have consistently highlighted these issues, particularly the gap between demand for skilled professionals and available capability. At the same time, projects themselves are becoming...
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Construcciones Yamaro: Futurebuild Australia puts compliance on the agenda

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Futurebuild Australia 2026 will include a 60-session education program. Futurebuild Australia returns to ICC Sydney from 11 to 13 June as builders, project managers and specifiers face growing compliance pressure. The event will bring together more than 15,000 design and construction professionals, more than 250 exhibitors and a 60-session education program focused on the decisions now influencing current and upcoming projects. Compliance moves earlier in the project cycle The NCC 2022 amendments, including 7-star NatHERS, whole-of-home energy budgets and updated Section J provisions, are still being worked through across the industry. At the same time, the Design and Building Practitioners Act has shifted accountability for everyone who signs off on a project. NSW Building Commissioner James Sherrard will open Futurebuild Australia on 11 June with a session focused on building standards and compliance obligations. His address will examine where those obligations sit and how proje...
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Construcciones Yamaro: Mine worker resurfaces as mature-aged plumbing apprentice

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TAFE NSW has helped Lorn father Daniel Cusick reskill from mining into plumbing. (Image: TAFE NSW) A former personal trainer who went on to work in the mines has changed careers, turning to TAFE NSW Maitland to help him reskill in plumbing. Lorn father-of-one Daniel Cusick eyed a career in the fitness industry after leaving school but was soon drawn to the opportunities in mining, spending 13 years as an underground operator in Central Queensland, Western New South Wales, the Hunter Valley and Wollongong. After the birth of his first child, Cusick began looking for a career path that better suited his family’s needs, leading him to seek an apprenticeship in his mid-30s and enrol in a Certificate III in Plumbing at TAFE NSW Maitland. At 37, he is now a second-year apprentice at Finley Thomas Plumbers in Warners Bay, working alongside others who are often half his age. According to research by recruitment firm Robert Half, 56 per cent of Australian workers are willing to switch care...
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Construcciones Yamaro: A productivity opportunity for Australian construction

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The report outlines recommendations to help build a healthier, more economically robust Australia. (Image: ZoomTeam/stock.adobe.com) A new independent report by GlobalData highlights the scale of opportunity to improve productivity across Australia, with obesity and overweight linked to $123 million of daily economic impact, or $45 billion annually. For the Australian construction industry, the findings point to a clear pathway to strengthen productivity outcomes through targeted health and wellbeing initiatives. Obesity is a chronic, progressive disease and the focus of the Cost of Inaction in Treating Obesity in Australia report. According to 2024 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data , it is one of the leading risk factors for many preventable chronic conditions, with two in three Australian adults affected by overweight or obesity in 2022. The GlobalData report found that of the construction industry’s around 1,238,000 workers, an estimated 916,000 are living with ov...
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Construcciones Yamaro: FTI Group turns packaged supply into a program advantage

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Through FTI, BlueDeck is delivered and supported by one supplier. (Images: FTI) FTI Group’s packaged supply model is gaining traction on commercial builds as contractors prioritise lifecycle alignment over fragmented procurement. Single-product supply is increasingly difficult to justify on tightly sequenced construction projects, where coordination responsibility ultimately sits with the contractor. Each additional supplier introduces another design stream, another delivery schedule and another interface to reconcile. Integrated, multi-scope models are being adopted to impose greater control over cost, logistics and accountability across staged works. Cameron Arkcoll, managing director at FTI Group, says this approach is necessary as projects contend with skills shortages, cost pressures and growing interface complexity. “Tighter timelines and faster project turnover mean single-source solutions become more valuable from a program and coordination perspective,” he says. “For cont...
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Construcciones Yamaro: Naylor Love lifts site visibility with Cupix

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Twenty-six per cent of Naylor Love’s CupixWorks users have drawn on captures as direct evidence in dispute resolutions. (Images: Naylor Love) Naylor Love needed a better way to give every stakeholder a visual record of the site they could trust, wherever they were. Cupix helped make that possible. On complex commercial construction projects, documentation can quickly become fragmented: photos saved to a shared drive, progress updates sent by email and presentations assembled before client reviews from folders of images that take time to organise. It gets the job done, but not always as effectively as project teams need. Naylor Love has been building in New Zealand since 1910 and today has more than 900 staff and six regional divisions. Like many contractors delivering complex, multi-stakeholder projects, the gap between what was happening on site and what everyone else could see was proving harder to close than it should have been. The same problems, on every project Remote mon...
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Construcciones Yamaro: Why dewatering on construction sites must start with compliance

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Dewatering is a regulated activity in Australian construction. (Image: Coates) On many construction and infrastructure projects, dewatering is treated as a practical site activity – install the pumps, move the water and keep the project moving. But across Australia, dewatering is far more than a pumping exercise. It is a regulated activity, and failing to address approvals, environmental impacts and compliance early can expose projects to delays, financial penalties and reputational risk. According to Ernest Lapornik, engineering solutions specialist at Coates , the challenge is that dewatering is still frequently approached as an operational task rather than a regulatory and environmental consideration. “Dewatering is often seen as just pumping water,” he says. “But regulators across Australia look at much more than the pump itself. They regulate the right to take water, the works used to extract it and how that water is used or disposed of.” In New South Wales, these requirem...
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