ACA’s submission to the Select Committee on Productivity
The Association of Consulting Architects lodged a formal submission with the Select Committee on Productivity in Australia on 20 February 2026, arguing for critical reforms to how government procures, regulates and supports the built environment professions.
Our submission draws on the experience of ACA’s 850 member practices and builds on insights provided to state-based productivity reviews. It argues that Australia’s productivity challenges in construction and professional services are systemic, not cyclical, and that meaningful progress requires coordinated national action. We argue that productivity is constrained by the following:
Short-term, price-driven procurement
Lowest-price procurement remains the dominant model for engaging architects and consultants in the public sector. This approach consistently undervalues early design input, shifts risk onto those least able to manage it, and drives up costs downstream through variations, disputes and poor life-cycle performance. Good design is an investment, and current procurement frameworks fail to recognise that.
The ACA is calling for Commonwealth funding to be linked to the adoption of value-based procurement frameworks that assess quality, capability and whole-of-life outcomes, not just upfront cost.
Risk allocation and insurance
Disproportionate risk transfer through uncapped liability, ‘fit-for-purpose’ obligations and heavily amended contracts is suppressing competition and pushing up professional indemnity premiums. Smaller practices are being squeezed out of public projects, and the result is more conservative, less innovative design outcomes.
We are calling for consistent use of standard form contracts with proportionate liability caps, and national reinforcement of proportionate liability frameworks to stabilise PI insurance markets.
Digital capability and AI
Building Information Modelling, data-enabled design and AI-assisted analysis offer genuine productivity gains, particularly when deployed early in a project. Yet adoption remains uneven, and practices that invest in digital capability are rarely rewarded for it under current procurement models.
The ACA is recommending that digital capability and BIM maturity be weighted criteria in government procurement, and that Australia develop a national built environment digital strategy, including clear guidance on responsible AI adoption in design and construction.
Workforce skills shortages and the cost of churn
Productivity is ultimately driven by people. The architecture profession faces significant skills shortages across technical and digital disciplines, but the challenge goes deeper than numbers. Unlike trades, the burden of transitioning graduates to professional competency falls almost entirely on architectural businesses, with little structured national support. This creates a productivity cost: senior practitioners spend substantial time mentoring and supervising rather than delivering projects. The result is churn at multiple career stages – early-career attrition, mid-career burnout and the loss of experienced practitioners.
The ACA is calling for a national built environment skills strategy encompassing education pathways, cadetships, digital upskilling and lifelong learning, as well as skills funding aligned with professional competency development and supervised transition-to-practice programs.
Wellbeing is a productivity issue
Genuine productivity gains cannot come at the expense of practitioner wellbeing. Research from the ARC Linkage Project on Architectural Work Cultures demonstrates that poor mental health directly undermines the quality, creativity and efficiency that define good design practice.
Our 2021 Practitioner Survey found that 37% of respondents worked more than 45 hours per week, with 8% exceeding 55 hours. Prolonged overwork increases errors and rework, drives absenteeism and leads to the loss of experienced talent – particularly women and those with caring responsibilities who are already underrepresented in senior roles.
The ACA is recommending that wellbeing metrics be included in government procurement evaluation criteria, that mandatory minimum fee guidelines be established, and that realistic timeframes and resourcing assessments be required. Our submission also calls for flexible and reduced-hours work models to be explicitly considered in workforce and skills policy, integrated with procurement reform and outcome-based performance measures.
Regulatory reform and better evidence
Members continue to report inefficiencies from duplicative compliance requirements, inconsistent regulatory approaches across jurisdictions, and overly prescriptive processes that constrain innovation. The ACA supports streamlining and harmonising regulatory frameworks with a focus on performance-based outcomes.
Critically, across all these areas, a consistent gap emerges: productivity reform in the built environment is being pursued with limited shared evidence. The ACA is calling for a coordinated national built environment research program to ensure future reform is grounded in what actually works.