Research · Helping NSW Build More · First Findings
The Delivery Deficit.
Why NSW approves more homes than it builds
A research initiative of Western Sydney University and Infinikey Consulting. First findings from twelve NSW housing delivery firms on where output is lost between approval and a finished home.
Published 8 September 2026 · Free to download and share
174k
Homes completed in the Accord's first full year
Against a required pace of approximately 240k homes per year.
−53%
Decline in construction labour productivity
About half as many dwellings completed per hour worked as 30 years ago (Productivity Commission).
1 / 12
Firms consistently seeing the live commercial position
Wave-one result; indicative, not statistically representative.
The reframe
The constraint sits downstream of approvals.
NSW’s housing challenge is increasingly a delivery and conversion problem, not simply a planning or approval problem. The state can approve housing at scale, but the delivery system is not consistently converting that capacity into completed homes. Australia completed approximately 174,000 homes in the Housing Accord’s first full year against a required pace of roughly 240,000 per year, a shortfall of around 27 per cent.
The evidence assembled in this study points to an operating-model deficit inside housing delivery firms. Its most visible symptom is a control deficit: leaders often cannot see the live commercial, programme and delivery position of their projects, so risks surface late and intervention arrives after cost and schedule are already affected. The constraint sits downstream of approvals. Build times have lengthened, margins remain thin, and delivery frequently depends on fragmented information and on decisions concentrated in a few senior individuals. External shocks matter, but they do not explain why similar firms achieve materially different outcomes.
Accelerating delivery therefore requires more than approvals, land supply or construction capacity: it requires strengthening the management system that converts approved projects into completed homes. That conversion gap is among the highest-leverage opportunities in the housing agenda.
Illustrative economics
A $5 million project at a 4 per cent margin generates $200,000 of expected profit. A $250,000 cumulative leakage from slippage, rework or unclaimed variation is therefore sufficient to eliminate the entire margin. The arithmetic is illustrative; its purpose is to show the sensitivity of low-margin delivery to weak control.
First findings at a glance
Execution holds. Visibility does not.
01
Execution holds; visibility does not. Nine of 12 firms report their standard process mostly holds; only one of 12 consistently sees the live commercial position.
02
The senior team is the operating system. Nine of 12 route decisions through a senior bottleneck; seven of 12 say outcomes depend on specific individuals.
03
Physical progress is live; commercial truth is retrospective. Site activity is visible in real time; margin, variations and cash exposure are reconstructed afterwards.
04
Growth confidence is low. Only one of 12 firms is confident it could add significant volume without quality deteriorating.
The full evidence behind each finding, the structural diagnosis, the measurement agenda and the complete source base are in the paper.
The control deficit
Seven questions a delivery business should be able to answer today.
The paper defines a control deficit simply. A firm has one when it cannot reliably answer these questions during delivery, not after it.
01
Where are we against programme?
02
What is the current cost-to-complete?
03
What margin is at risk?
04
Which decisions are overdue?
05
Which issues are likely to become critical?
06
Who has the authority to act?
07
What has been earned but not yet claimed?
When those answers depend on individual effort, spreadsheets, meetings and retrospective reconciliation, the organisation is operating heroically rather than systematically.
A delivery maturity model
Heroic, managed or systematised.
|
Dimension
|
Heroic delivery
|
Managed delivery
|
Systematised delivery
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Visibility
|
Position reconstructed after the fact
|
Periodic visibility, often month-end
|
Live project, programme and commercial position
|
|
Decision-making
|
Routes through individuals
|
Senior team remains a bottleneck
|
Clear decision rights and cadence
|
|
Problem management
|
Crisis-driven
|
Issues tracked periodically
|
Early signals trigger intervention
|
|
Capability
|
Resides in people
|
Partly standardised
|
Embedded in the operating model
|
|
Growth
|
More projects require more heroes
|
Growth strains management
|
Volume can scale without proportional dependence on individuals
|
The model is a diagnostic framework, not a claim that every firm progresses in a straight line. Its value is practical: it shifts the conversation from individual performance to organisational design.
The MMC test
Changing the method without changing the model.
Offsite construction is the supply-side bet NSW and the Commonwealth are now making. Section 7 of the paper examines six offsite business failures, three Australian and three international, and finds the same operating-model signature in every one: demand concentration, factory under-utilisation against fixed overheads, and working capital misaligned with how construction gets paid. In none of them did the building product fail.
The Productivity Commission figures of up to 50 per cent faster and up to 20 per cent cheaper are a ceiling, available to firms whose operating model can hold continuous factory throughput, frozen designs and a smoothed pipeline. They are not a default outcome of adopting the method.
Six offsite failures, one signature
|
Firm
|
Jurisdiction
|
Year
|
Outcome
|
Documented operating-model causes (as reported)
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Strongbuild
|
Australia (NSW)
|
2018
|
Voluntary administration
|
Cancellation of a major client project; $10.5m lending facility fell through; demand concentration
|
|
Viridi Group
|
Australia (NSW)
|
2024
|
Voluntary administration; later DOCA
|
Suspension of a single government-backed contract; working-capital shortfall; single-client pipeline
|
|
CLOS
|
Australia (VIC)
|
2024
|
Voluntary administration (May); liquidation (July)
|
High capital expenses and project cost blowouts; scaling ahead of secured demand
|
|
Katerra (intl benchmark)
|
United States
|
2021
|
Chapter 11 bankruptcy
|
Over-extension across the value chain; cash burn; governance failures despite ~US$2b raised
|
|
Ilke Homes (intl benchmark)
|
United Kingdom
|
2023
|
Administration; ~£320m owed
|
Factory overhead cash burn; investor withdrawal despite 3,000-home pipeline
|
|
L&G Modular (intl benchmark)
|
United Kingdom
|
2023
|
Production ceased; ~£174m cumulative losses
|
Inability to secure pipeline scale for the factory model
|
In each case the production capability was functional at the point of failure. What failed was the business model around it.
Six offsite failures, one signature
The briefing covers the MMC findings in full: why six offsite failures share one operating-model signature, and what has to change in the operating model before the factory pays off. If you are adopting, scaling or investing in MMC in NSW, this is the briefing to be in the room for.
Implications
What would need to be true.
The paper defines a control deficit simply. A firm has one when it cannot reliably answer these questions during delivery, not after it.
For industry
- Treat operating-model capability as a strategic asset, not an administrative overhead.
- Move from retrospective project reporting to live cost-to-complete, programme and risk visibility.
- Treat modern methods of construction as an operating-model transition rather than a procurement decision.
Implications
- Broaden the definition of construction capacity beyond workforce and approvals to include delivery-management capability.
- Create sector-level visibility of delivery performance so interventions are evaluated against completed homes, not approvals or starts.
- Use the emerging prefabrication certification scheme as a capability-building lever as well as a compliance gate.
About the research
How the evidence was assembled.
Wave one combined public evidence with primary research involving 12 NSW firms spanning development, head contracting, civil, trade and project management, using a structured questionnaire across four operating-control dimensions (Execution, Visibility, Accountability, Growth-readiness) plus project walk-through interviews testing reported confidence against demonstrated control. The primary evidence is indicative rather than statistically representative.
These are first findings from wave one. The primary evidence is indicative rather than statistically representative, and is read alongside the public record from the Productivity Commission, CEDA, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and industry bodies. Wave-one responses are de-identified and no participating firm is named.
The control deficit
01
The reframe: from approval to delivery
02
The evidence: a delivery system under pressure
03
The structural diagnosis: an industry built around projects, not operating systems
04
What the primary research found: four findings from twelve NSW firms
05
The core diagnosis: a control deficit caused by an operating-model deficit
06
A delivery maturity model
07
The MMC test: changing the method without changing the model
08
What would need to be true
09
Implications for the NSW housing agenda
10
Measurement agenda
11
Research methodology
12
Conclusion and full source list
Dr. Nassim Aissa Belbaly
Academic co-lead · School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences, Western Sydney University
Dr. Nassim Aissa Belbaly is the industry Liaison of the School of Computer, Data & Mathematical Sciences at Western Sydney University. He possesses over 20 years of experience in higher education as a dean, professor, and entrepreneur specializing in data science, consumer behaviour, and generative AI systems.
Malik Asad Ali
Founder and Principal Consultant · Infinikey Consulting
Fifteen-plus years across transformation, operations improvement and complex delivery environments. Works with leadership teams to fix the structure behind execution, not just the symptoms on the surface. Leads the construction stream of the research and the industry engagement around it.
Built on the public record
Productivity Commission
CEDA
National Housing Supply and Affordability Council
Australian Bureau of Statistics
ASIC
Master Builders Australia
Housing Industry Association
Ai Group
Australian Building Codes Board
NSW Government
Victorian Government
Senate Select Committee on Productivity in Australia
McKinsey Global Institute
Chandler, Hardie, Perera and Langston (2019)
The bottom line
NSW's delivery capacity is not determined only by how many projects are approved or how many workers are available. It is also determined by whether the businesses responsible for delivery can see, decide and act while there is still time to change the outcome.
The bottom line
The response comes next.
01
Diagnose
This paper. Where output is lost between approval and a finished home, and why. Published 8 September.
02
Respond
The build phase. What the delivery system needs to look like to close the gap, who is building it, and how NSW firms can be part of it. Announced at the briefing on 30 September, in the room first.
03
Measure
Once the response is in place inside firms, delivery can be measured where it happens: against completed homes, not approvals or starts. What gets built is what makes the measurement possible.
The bottom line
The people in the room on 30 September hear the response before anyone else, and get first access to what follows.
Industry briefing · 30 September 2026
The findings, presented and debated.
A two-hour briefing for the people who deliver housing in NSW: developers, builders, housing providers and offsite manufacturers. The findings are presented in full, then a senior industry panel responds: what holds up, what doesn’t, and what the delivery system would need to look like to close the gap. This is where the paper’s question gets its answer.
When
Tuesday 30 September 2026, 10:00am to 12:00pm
Where
Western Sydney University, Parramatta City campus, 169 Macquarie Street, Parramatta
Panel
Senior industry panel. Names announced through September.
Focus
The findings in full, including the MMC evidence, a senior panel response, and the announcement of the build phase.
Seats
The room is capped. A waitlist opens when it fills. Every seat includes a printed copy of the findings.
Seats capped · Waitlist opens when the room fills
Take part
The research continues.
Wave two extends the research to more firms across the NSW delivery chain and adds a stream on modern methods of construction. If you build or develop housing in NSW, or deliver it as a community housing provider, there is a place for you: sit alongside peers of the same calibre, help shape what gets measured, and see the findings first.