Cruel way building industry suffering
Too much work in sector
Construction giant Hutchinson Builders has knocked back $7.1 billion of work this year, saying Queensland is the busiest sector in the country.
Hutchinson Builders chairman Scott Hutchinson said there was too much work in the industry right now and not enough people to do it.
“Queensland is the worst place. That’s the busiest. South East Queensland is absolutely booming, especially the Gold Coast,” Mr Hutchinson said.
But it isn’t just SEQ, there is now a flow-on effect to the regions.
“That also means because often the workers who will travel to regional places in Queensland – now won’t travel so getting anything built in the regions is very hard,” he said.
“There’s a lot of work in Toowoomba.”
Mr Hutchinson said the crazy boom started in September and October of 2022 and has continued.
“We have had another one of these, where the volume of work that needed to get done far exceeded the capacity,” he said.
“It happened before but I’ve never seen it like this. There’s a lot of undercapitalised workers out there.
“It’s the worst by far, its much worse than 2003.”
But Mr Hutchinson said they had knocked back work because it might not go ahead so they have had to pick carefully.
“The real effect it will have on development is most of the proposed private work won’t go ahead because the construction prices are too high and they can’t sell them at the prices set.”
Mr Hutchinson said the demand meant less efficiency.
“It makes the sub contractors less efficient, then the ones on fixed contract can’t make a profit cause they are less efficient, then we lose money,” he said.
“Or they go broke on our job, and we have to take the trade over.”
“We are finishing off jobs that builders have gone broke. Some clients have had a builder go broke and have another builder go broke so it’s pretty stressful for the client.”
Mr Hutchinson said there was no solution at the moment.
”I’m not calling on anybody to do anything,” he said.
“What’s got to happen is a whole lot of projects won’t go ahead and that will reduce the demand.”