August 2026
Net zero is everyone’s job
Closing infrastructure’s carbon skills gap
Australia has policies to decarbonise infrastructure and half the workforce is on board. Now, we must engage the other half, says Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council CEO Alison Scotland.
Flip a coin. That’s roughly the chance an Australian infrastructure worker is currently contributing to net zero outcomes.
In 2025, the Delivering Net Zero Infrastructure: Workforce Report put some confronting numbers around Australia’s capability challenge. Around 53% of Australia’s core infrastructure workforce are already engaged in work that contributes to reducing project emissions.
But what about the other half?
“Governments won’t achieve the ambitions of their net zero policies unless the value chain can execute,” says ASBEC CEO Alison Scotland.
The solution isn’t to amass an army of sustainability specialists or call in the carbon cavalry. “We need to broaden responsibility for carbon and build capability across the workforce we already have. We need sustainability and net zero 101 training for every profession that doesn’t think sustainability and net zero are their jobs.”
From policy to practice
ASBEC brings together more than 40 industry associations, professional bodies and not-for-profits, alongside more than 20 government and academic observers. Collectively, ASBEC’s members span the A-to-Z of Australia’s built environment.
ASBEC’s new four-year strategy identifies skills and capability among critical enablers of its three interrelated priorities: decarbonisation; resilience and adaptation; and circularity.
The Infrastructure Net Zero committee, chaired by Consult Australia CEO Jonathan Cartledge, is creating a new Carbon Management in Infrastructure Fundamentals course, to be piloted in November.
This course takes policies off the page and into practice.
“It’s participant-focused training, rather than policy speak. It’s practical and pragmatic: why should I care, and what should I do?”
Inspired by the United Kingdom’s PAS 2080 – the world’s first specification for managing whole-life carbon in infrastructure and buildings – Carbon Management in Infrastructure Fundamentals is grounded in Australian policy, standards and practice.
“Participants will learn about the carbon reduction hierarchy, where different professions have influence, and why decisions made upfront matter disproportionately. We want to talk about carbon in language that makes sense to the different professions.”
For a quantity surveyor, that may mean understanding how to cost low-carbon materials properly. For an engineer, it may mean challenging the way a technical specification has always been written. For procurement teams, it could mean creating room for a different product or process. Same carbon, different dialects.
Carbon in the small print
Net zero may be a colossal, collective ambition, but cutting carbon from infrastructure often comes down to small decisions, made by individuals.
Low-carbon concrete, for example, can have different curing times and processes to traditional mixes. This can ripple through the sequencing, timing and cost of everything that follows.
Low-carbon steel can deliver equivalent strength with substantially less material. But if steel is specified by tonnage rather than by performance outcome, the lower-carbon option may never get a look-in.
The catch, of course, is knowing there is a different decision to make. “That’s why net zero infrastructure won’t be delivered by sustainability specialists working in isolation. Carbon has to be a consideration in our ordinary decision-making.”
There is a commercial dimension to this upskilling too, Alison notes. “Stronger carbon capability is increasingly valuable in bids and can open the door to innovation.”
Playing the long game
For Consult Australia members, there is another reason why this work matters. The professions that advise clients early have an outsized opportunity to influence outcomes.
As chair of ASBEC’s Infrastructure Net Zero committee, Consult Australia CEO Jonathan Cartledge is helping government and industry explore new ways to deliver infrastructure that is future-fit, resilient and adaptive.
Alison credits Jonathan with bringing rare clarity to this conversation. “Jonathan is very good at pinpointing exactly why we all need to be talking together. He sees the challenges across the whole delivery process, from concept to completion, so he’s very well placed to provide that leadership. And he does it with diplomacy and finesse.”
Consult Australia’s membership of FIDIC provides another conduit to global knowledge so Infrastructure Net Zero doesn’t have to start from scratch, Alison notes.
ASBEC’s Carbon Management in Infrastructure Fundamentals training will pilot in November. Then the conversation widens again. ASBEC’s Infrastructure Net Zero committee will host a resilience and adaptation workshop exploring what those concepts mean in practice for Australia’s infrastructure assets.
For Alison, this kind of industry change demands patience, persistence and a willingness to think beyond the next project or policy cycle.
“We are playing the long game. The longest game. And I love being part of that.”