Construcciones Yamaro: De-risking construction technology investment
Payapps explains why a project-first strategy allows contractors to build confidence before scaling construction technology across the business.
By Ian Moss, marketing leader for Australia and New Zealand at Payapps – An Autodesk Company.
As the Australian construction sector faces a continued productivity imperative, the industry is entering a critical transition. While the project pipeline is beginning to stabilise, the sector remains under pressure from tight margins, skills shortages and heightened scrutiny of value for money.
Recent analysis, including commentary following the Queensland Productivity Commission’s Final Report: Opportunities to Improve Productivity of the Construction Industry, reinforces that productivity has been stagnant for years. Structural inefficiencies undermine performance across projects of all sizes. Poor risk allocation, fragmented processes and manual workflows continue to inflate costs. For years, the industry was told that digital transformation had to be a top-down, multi-million-dollar “Big Bang” event. Today, evidence suggests that approach is being replaced by a more pragmatic strategy: project-first deployment.
The strategic case for risk mitigation
Today’s construction executive is rightfully cautious. Having witnessed expensive, multi-year implementations that failed to gain traction on site, leaders are shifting away from top-down mandates toward a mindset of deliberate de-risking.
During panel conversations held at FCON-Tech 2025, a consensus emerged among Tier 1 and Tier 2 construction leaders: they are no longer looking for a silver bullet that rolls out across the business on day one. Instead, they are looking for “little wins” on individual projects. Industry chief executives now emphasise the value of establishing a strategic proof point – where construction technology, such as Payapps’ progress claim software, can be deployed and its impact measured in a high-stakes, real-world environment before being committed to the wider business.
“We’re seeing a shift in how construction leaders approach technology. The most successful conversations we have aren’t about a massive, disruptive overhaul. They often start by solving a friction point on a single project,” says Misty Cronin, head of sales for Australia and New Zealand at Payapps.
“When a team sees the immediate ROI on site, the move to an enterprise-wide rollout isn’t a hard sell – it’s the next logical step for a business that wants to standardise excellence and improve subcontractor management.”
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- FCON-Tech 2025 insights: The no-nonsense approach
- Why tech adoption is a good bet for the industry
Laying foundations
The power of this site-first approach is best evidenced by builders expanding into new territories or tackling high-stakes developments. When establishing operations in new regions, leading developers and builders are choosing to implement consistent, contract-driven frameworks from the first project.
When Far East Consortium (FEC) established its construction operations in Queensland to manage projects like the Queen’s Wharf Tower, it recognised that scalability required a departure from manual workflows. By opting to deploy Payapps’ progress claim software, it ensured compliance with the Security of Payment Act (SOPA) and established professional controls from day one.
FEC Queensland achieved a scalable, standardised process that supports growth without increasing administrative overhead or introducing compliance risk.
“Once we explained the financial cost and risk of SOPA non-compliance, lost time and paying for additional headcount just to manage the claims process, plus the benefit of using tools like Payapps to attract the highest calibre subcontractors, they were quickly in agreement,” says Andrew White, director at FEC Queensland. “Payapps just made sense.”
A path to national consistency
A recurring theme at FCON-Tech 2025 was the “path of least resistance”. If a tool feels harder than a spreadsheet, it won’t be used. This is why project-first deployment is the ultimate litmus test for usability. If the site team finds value, the enterprise rollout becomes a natural progression rather than an enforced mandate.
Consider Unita, a national fit-out specialist that wanted to move away from error-prone spreadsheets and reduce communication breakdowns. For Unita, the advantage of implementing Payapps was its ability to support a staged, low-risk rollout. Rather than needing to overhaul the entire business at once, the team could deploy Payapps on one or two projects, validate the framework, and refine the process before scaling nationally.
Unita achieved a 60 per cent reduction in assessment time, while helping to reduce the risk of manual mistakes in retention and variation calculations.
“Our senior leadership really empowered us to spend the time, specifically with our commercial team, to understand the current process and overlay that with Payapps’ capabilities – very quickly we could see where we could build that consistent, standardised framework,” says Sian Dyson, business improvement manager at Unita.
Cronin adds: “When a project manager realises they can assess a claim in minutes rather than hours, they become our biggest advocates. We find that once our solution has proven itself at the project level and eliminates those manual errors, the internal demand for the tool grows organically. We aren’t just selling progress claim software; we’re selling a better way to work that the teams want to use.”
Becoming the ‘builder of choice’
In a market defined by skills shortages, being a “builder of choice” is a competitive advantage. When a project-first deployment simplifies the subcontractor’s life – offering a transparent dashboard to view claim status and receive automated notifications – the relationship shifts from adversarial to collaborative.
As noted by technology managers at FCON-Tech, this level of transparency is critical for de-risking the business. Starting at the project level allows IT and finance teams to verify integrations and data flows in a controlled environment. They can ensure that progress claim data from the field flows seamlessly into the corporate ledger via application programming interfaces (APIs) before committing to a company-wide rollout.
From proof-point to enterprise success
The transition from a single project success to an enterprise-wide mandate is where the true value of project-first lies. For the cautious buyer, this path provides the data-backed confidence required to invest. It transforms the technology from a cost centre into a proven performance driver.
The winners will be those who can scale without disruption. By focusing on project-first success, builders can build internal advocacy, ensure data integrity through construction ERP integration, and ultimately create a more resilient business model.
Building confidence, one site at a time
The era of the “Big Bang” rollout is over. The most successful builders in the Australian market are those who recognise that digital transformation is a series of successful projects, not a single destination. By choosing scalable, easy-to-deploy construction software like Payapps, firms can demonstrate ROI on site and secure their teams’ advocacy before moving to an enterprise license.
“Standardisation shouldn’t be a burden; it should be the reward for finding a process that works on the ground,” says Cronin. “By starting at the project level, we help builders build the confidence they need to lead the market.”
To learn more, visit payapps.com
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