What is the biggest challenge facing South Australia’s built environment sector?
It’s hard to look past the step-change in infrastructure spending booked for the next few years. Government investment is set to rise to over $5 billion annually by 2026-27.
The big question for South Australia is do they have enough people with the right skills to build it all?
The data suggests industry is gearing up. Prior to 2018, heavy and civil construction firms consistently employed less than 4,000 people in South Australia. Since then, the figure has nearly doubled.
This is all good news for a civil construction sector that has played second fiddle to the larger states over the last couple of decades in terms of infrastructure investment.
The key challenge for South Australia going forward will be to avoid the ‘growing pains’ that afflicted previous infrastructure booms in the larger states – chronic labour shortages among them.
Navigating those issues should be a little easier in South Australia given both NSW and Victoria will be releasing capacity over the coming years as their pipelines thin.
