June 2026

Redesigning design 

“Design shapes cost, risk and delivery. But too often, the way design is collectively approached adds friction, delay and unnecessary complexity,” says Australian Constructors Association CEO, Peter Colacino.

For years, the industry has talked about inefficiencies in design. These are challenges the design community knows and understands. We’ve all seen the causes: late engagement, unclear scope, endless review cycles, duplicated effort and decision-making that drags on longer than it should. The result is predictable and it shows up in rework, delay, increased cost and compromised scope.

What’s new is that we now have a clear, shared view of what better looks like.

Through the Partnership for Change, the Australian Constructors Association, Consult Australia and the Construction Industry Leadership Forum have worked together to develop a set of best practice design principles grounded in lived experience. These principles reflect a shared view of what actually drives better outcomes.

Redesigning how we design is one of the biggest opportunities in front of us. At this year’s Foundations and Frontiers forum (FF26), we will be exploring best practice in action. Not through theory, but by singling out the projects where it has worked in practice and how we can apply it consistently across projects. What changed, what stopped and what made the difference to the project working.

The ‘Redesigning design’ session at FF26 will bring these principles to life through a live project and a shared view from contractors and consultants on what works.

Good design processes don’t happen by accident. They are deliberate. Five principles are at the core of redesigning design.

The first principle is early engagement. When constructors, designers and stakeholders are brought in early, we get better alignment to outcome, stronger constructability and fewer surprises downstream. Too often, these voices come in too late, when options are limited and change becomes expensive. Getting this right sets the project up for success.

The second principle is clarity in design review. Reviews should be purposeful, risk-based and focused on compliance. Yet in many projects they become open-ended exercises driven by preference, not necessity. That’s where time is lost. Clear rules, defined scopes and disciplined review processes can dramatically reduce effort and expedite delivery timeframes.

The third is governance and decision-making. Projects move at the pace of decisions. Where roles are unclear or authority is diluted, progress slows. Clear accountability and timely decision-making are not just good practice; they are essential to productivity.

Alongside these, the principles recognise the importance of digital collaboration and meaningful stakeholder engagement used not as additional layers, but as tools to support clarity, transparency and better outcomes.

Taken together, these principles address the productivity challenge our industry faces. Improving productivity in construction isn’t about working harder. It’s about removing the friction that sits between a defining a clear requirement, designing a reliable output and a process to create a great outcome.

Better design processes reduce rework and reduce delivery risks. They limit late-stage changes. They improve program certainty and manage risk earlier, when it is easier and cheaper to address. In short, they lead to better projects.

But knowing what works is only part of the equation.

The real challenge, and the focus of Foundations and Frontiers, is scaling it from a single exemplary project to a high performing industry.

The FF26 session goes beyond identifying good practice. It asks a more important question: what would it take to make this the norm, not the exception? That means clients taking an active role in setting expectations and enforcing them. It means designers and constructors working within clear frameworks. And it means the industry being willing to stop doing the things we know don’t add value.

We already have strong alignment on the problem. We are getting clearer on the solution. The next step is consistency. If we can embed these principles across projects, public and private, we can start to unlock meaningful improvements in productivity, cost certainty and outcomes for the community.

The path to best practice is clear. Now it’s translating intent to delivery.

About the author

Peter Colacino is Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Constructors Association. His experience bridges the entire project lifecycle from strategic policy through to project delivery and operations. Previous roles have included NSW Project Strategy and Delivery Leader for Mott MacDonald and Chief of Policy and Research at Infrastructure Australia.