Why the diseases are in this order
The five diseases on the previous page are listed in the order published research says they cost a contractor, most first: rework, the baseline overrun, forfeited entitlements, disputes, non-compliance. Weather rolled into forfeited entitlements: a wet day the contract’s extension-of-time or delay-cost clause doesn’t get claimed is exactly a forfeited entitlement, not a disease of its own.
This page is the case for that order. You shouldn’t have to take our word for any of it, so every figure links to the paper, report or data release it came from, along with where in that document to look.
Meet the $5 million job
Section titled “Meet the $5 million job”To make the numbers mean something, we’ll run every one of them through the same project: a $5 million civil job, with 52 weeks to complete.
Say it’s priced at a 9% gross margin: what’s left after the job’s own costs, before head office. That isn’t a number we picked out of the air. Across 67 projects, one Australian contractor’s mean margin, excluding overheads, was 9.89% (free copy, p.25). Love and Ika found a mean forecast margin of almost 9% on Australian transport projects, and six years of contractor ledgers show margins between 6% and 9%. So if everything goes to plan, the job makes $450,000 gross.
Every disease below eats into that $450,000. The question each section answers is: how much, on average, and how sure can we be?
Here’s the whole picture before we go one by one:
| Disease | The average figure | On the $5M job | What kind of number it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Rework | 10% of contract value | $500,000 | Measured cost, most of it carried by the contractor |
| 2. The baseline overrun | 20% over the promised budget (roads) | $1,000,000 | Measured overrun; how much of it the contractor carries is unmeasured |
| 3. Forfeited entitlements | 4.9% retention held, 10.6% in variations, 20 wet days priced in | $245,000 held, $530,000 to claim, $17,400 to $40,300 of unclaimed wet-day overhead | Money at stake (retention, variations) plus a worked-example loss (weather); not a fully measured loss |
| 4. Disputes | 33.4% of the budget in dispute | $1,670,000 | Money at stake, from large projects already in dispute |
| 5. Non-compliance | $1,200 to $97,408 per accident, to the employer | Up to $97,408 per incident | Cost per incident, not a share of the contract |
What the $5M job actually makes
Section titled “What the $5M job actually makes”Now take the $450,000 and subtract only the losses the research says land on the contractor. The right-hand column is the same job with each of those diseases caught before it turns into a cost.
| With the diseases | If each disease is caught in time | Where the number comes from | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planned gross margin (9%, before head office) | $450,000 | $450,000 | Love et al. 2017 |
| Rework: the contractor’s measured profit loss (23%) | -$103,500 | $0 | 1. Rework |
| Forfeited entitlements - retention never returned: 4.9% held, with a 13.1% chance for smaller contractors (UK) | -$32,100 | $0 | 3. Forfeited entitlements |
| Forfeited entitlements - weather: 20 priced-in wet days at $870 to $2,010 a day of time-related site overhead never claimed | -$17,400 to -$40,300 | $0 | 3. Forfeited entitlements |
| Gross profit | $274,100 to $297,000 (5.5% to 5.9%) | $450,000 (9%) | |
| Head office overhead: about 1% to 2% of the contract | -$49,500 to -$99,000 | -$49,500 to -$99,000 | O’Leary & Vaz-Serra 2025: head office is 9.9% of preliminaries (table 4), and preliminaries are 10% to 20% of the contract sum (introduction) |
| Net profit | $175,100 to $247,500 (3.5% to 4.9%) | $351,000 to $400,500 (7.0% to 8.0%) | |
| The baseline overrun’s share, the unclaimed variations pot, disputes, incidents | Not measured, so not subtracted | - | 2, 3 (the $530,000 variations pot itself), 4, 5 |
The ranges run from low overheads (preliminaries at 10% of the contract) to high (20%), which moves both the weather cost and head office together.
That’s $153,000 to $176,000 of net profit between the two columns on a single job, and it counts only two diseases with a number behind them - one of them (forfeited entitlements) by way of two separate worked examples, retention and weather. The other three would come off the left-hand column too, so read it as the best case, not the typical one.
Does 3.5% to 4.9% net look right? The industry’s real books say it’s in the right place. Across Australian heavy and civil engineering construction, operating profit before tax was 5.4% of income in 2022-23, 6.9% of sales in 2023-24 (construction datacube, table 1) and 2.3% in 2011-12. Large Victorian commercial builders averaged net margins that fell from 4.0% to 1.4% between 2006 and 2015.
How we set the order
Section titled “How we set the order”In September 2026 we ran six separate literature searches, one per disease as it stood at the time (weather has since rolled into forfeited entitlements, taking its research trail with it). Each had three rules: only report a figure actually read in the source, say exactly what it’s a percentage of, and say so plainly when good evidence doesn’t exist instead of stretching a weak number.
Every figure was then checked a second time against the original source before it went on this page. Where we could only see a figure through someone else’s citation, it’s marked secondary.
Where two diseases had similarly strong evidence, we broke the tie by asking which figure measures money the contractor itself loses, rather than money that’s merely at stake or mostly borne by someone else. That’s why rework sits above the baseline overrun, even though the overrun’s dollar figure is bigger.
1. Rework
Section titled “1. Rework”On the $5M job, a batch of kerbs gets poured to the wrong level. They’re broken out and poured again. The direct cost is the concrete, the crew and the plant for a second go. The indirect cost is everything that waited while it happened: the paving crew standing down, the program sliding, the supervisor’s week gone.
Rework has the strongest evidence of the five, and it points one way: it’s common, it’s large, and the contractor pays for it.
A survey of 115 Australian civil infrastructure projects put total rework at 10% of contract value. On our job, that’s $500,000, more than the entire $450,000 margin. A national survey of 161 construction professionals split it into 6.4% direct and 5.9% indirect: $320,000 plus $295,000.
The ledger studies tell a different story, and it’s worth understanding why. When one contractor’s actual project records were examined, rework came to only 0.38% of contract value, or 0.76% once post-completion fixes were added: $19,000 to $38,000 on our job. But the same study found that actual rework costs are underreported by around 300% against what site records show. Most rework is simply never written down as rework.
Either way, the contractor pays. Six years of one Australian contractor’s ledgers found it bore rework costs directly on 93% of its projects, and lost a mean 23% of its profit a year to it. On our job, 23% of the $450,000 margin is about $103,500.
| What was found | % | Amount | On the $5M job | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean total rework cost (survey of 115 Australian civil infrastructure projects) | 10% of contract value | - | $500,000 | Love, Edwards, Watson & Davis, Rework in Civil Infrastructure Projects: Determination of Cost Predictors, J. Constr. Eng. Manage. 136(3), 2010 (abstract) |
| Mean direct and indirect rework cost (national survey of 161 Australian construction professionals) | 6.4% direct + 5.9% indirect | - | $320,000 + $295,000 | Love & Edwards, Calculating total rework costs in Australian construction projects, Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems 22(1):11-27, 2005 (abstract) |
| Projects where the contractor bore rework costs directly; mean profit lost per year; contractor margins (98 projects, one contractor, six years of ledgers) | 93% of projects; 23% of profit; margins 6-9% | - | About $103,500 of a $450,000 margin | Love, Ika, Ahiaga-Dagbui, Locatelli & Sing, Make-or-break during production, Production Planning & Control 30(4):285-298, 2019 (results) |
| Rework on one contractor’s raw records, then including post-completion fixes; costs underreported against site records | 0.38%, then 0.76% of contract value; underreported ~300% | - | $19,000 to $38,000 as recorded | Love, Quantifying the Costs of Field Rework in Construction, J. Constr. Eng. Manage. 152(1), 2026 (abstract). Secondary: we read it through ASCE Civil Engineering Source, 22 Jan 2026; the paper itself couldn’t be opened |
| Field rework on heavy industrial projects (framing figures, not either source’s own measured result) | Often 5% (Hwang); mean above 3% (CII) of construction cost | - | $150,000 to $250,000 | Hwang, Thomas, Haas & Caldas, Measuring the Impact of Rework on Construction Cost Performance, J. Constr. Eng. Manage. 135(3):187-198, 2009; CII, Field Rework Index (RS153-1), 2001 |
Why the two kinds of study disagree: surveys ask people what rework cost (6-10%); ledgers count what got recorded (0.4-0.8%). The 2026 study’s own finding, that most rework never gets recorded, explains most of the gap. Even taking the low end, rework removes a real share of a margin that was only 6-9% to start with.
See the registers that catch rework →
2. The baseline overrun
Section titled “2. The baseline overrun”The $5M job was estimated, tendered and won at a number. The baseline overrun is the slow gap between that number and what the job actually costs: a subcontractor’s price that went up, quantities that came in higher, a cost code that nobody reconciled until the job was nearly done.
There’s strong evidence that overruns are large and common, and that margins are thin enough for a modest one to wipe them out. There’s weak evidence on how much of an overrun the contractor keeps rather than recovering through variations.
Flyvbjerg’s study of 258 transport projects in 20 countries found roads came in 20% over budget on average, and all project types 28%. On a $5M budget, that’s $1,000,000 to $1,400,000. Closer to home, the Grattan Institute found Australian transport projects cost $28 billion (24%) more than promised, with about a third of projects going over. A later Grattan report found about a quarter of projects cost more than promised measured from the day the contract was signed.
Those are overruns against the client’s budget, and much of that money is paid by the client. What tells us overruns land on contractors too is the state of contractors’ books. The Reserve Bank found over a quarter of Australia’s 200 largest builders posted an operating loss in the year to March 2022, and that construction makes up close to 30% of company insolvencies, driven by fixed-price contracts meeting rising costs. ASIC’s figures for 2023-24 put construction at 27% of companies entering external administration.
On our job, a 9% margin is $450,000. A 9% overrun that can’t be recovered, less than half the average road overrun, takes the whole thing.
| What was found | % | Amount | On the $5M job | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average cost escalation, decision to build vs actual, real terms (258 projects, 20 countries) | Roads 20% (n=167); all types 28% | - | $1,000,000 to $1,400,000 over | Flyvbjerg, Holm & Buhl, What Causes Cost Overrun in Transport Infrastructure Projects?, Transport Reviews 24(1):3-18, 2004 (p.5) |
| Cost over promised budget (836 Australian transport projects over $20m, 2001-2016) | 24% more; 34% of projects over budget | $28 billion | $1,200,000 over; about a 1-in-3 chance of going over | Terrill & Danks, Cost overruns in transport infrastructure, Grattan Institute, 2016 (PDF pp.9, 29) |
| Projects that cost more than promised, measured from contract signing (Australian transport megaprojects) | About 25% of projects | - | About a 1-in-4 chance | Terrill, Emslie & Fox, Megabang for megabucks, Grattan Institute, 2021 (p.3) |
| Mean forecast contractor margin (8 Australian transport projects) | Almost 9% | - | $450,000 | Love & Ika, The ‘context’ of transport project cost performance, Research in Transportation Economics 90, 2021 (abstract) |
| Largest 200 builders with an operating loss (year to March 2022); construction’s share of insolvencies | Over 25% of builders; close to 30% of insolvencies | - | - | Reserve Bank of Australia, Financial Stability Review, October 2022, Box C |
| Construction’s share of companies entering external administration (FY2023-24) | 27% | - | - | ASIC insolvency statistics, 2024 |
| Largest Australian firms lost their planned margin plus a further 7% on large infrastructure projects | 9% planned margin lost, plus 7% | - | A $450,000 profit becomes a $350,000 loss | Secondary: Ryan & Duffield, Contractor performance on mega projects, 2017, as cited in Megabang for megabucks (p.15, footnote 49). Grattan itself doubts it: “The study does not explain why shareholders would tolerate such a pattern of losses.” |
What we don’t know: nobody has reliably measured what share of an overrun lands on the contractor rather than being recovered through variations. The one figure that speaks to it directly, the extra 7% margin loss, is second-hand, and the report that cites it is sceptical. The margins, the losses and the insolvency numbers are the strongest indirect evidence we have.
See the registers that catch the baseline overrun →
3. Forfeited entitlements
Section titled “3. Forfeited entitlements”Halfway through the $5M job, the client asks for an extra drainage run. The crew builds it. The variation gets raised late, priced loosely, and never formally approved, so it’s never paid. At the end of the job, 5% of every progress claim has been held back as retention, and some of it doesn’t come back either.
No study measures the share of variations or claims a contractor never recovers. What the evidence does show is how big the pot is, how often contractors walk away from the protections they’re entitled to, and how much never gets paid when a business fails.
On an Australian public infrastructure program, client-approved change orders averaged 10.6% of the original contract value. On our job, that’s $530,000 of variations that have to be noticed, priced, submitted and approved on time to be paid. In the UK, average retention was 4.9% of contract value, so about $245,000 of our job’s money is held back until the defects period ends. For smaller (tier 3) contractors, retention wasn’t returned at all on 13.1% of contracts: roughly a 1-in-8 chance of never seeing that $245,000.
Australia built laws specifically to get contractors paid. Yet in the 2017 national review of those laws, only 23% of respondents had ever used them. And when payment fails outright, it fails completely: a 2015 Senate inquiry found around $3 billion a year goes unpaid in the industry, and of 2,153 construction companies liquidated in 2013-14, 1,974 paid their unsecured creditors, usually subcontractors, nothing at all.
| What was found | % | Amount | On the $5M job | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unpaid debts in the Australian construction industry, per year | - | Around $3 billion | - | Senate Economics References Committee, “I just want to be paid”: Insolvency in the Australian construction industry, Dec 2015 (ch.2) |
| Liquidated construction companies that paid unsecured creditors zero cents in the dollar (2013-14, ASIC data) | 91.7% | 1,974 of 2,153 companies | - | Same report (para 3.12, table 3.4) |
| Average retention held; contracts where retention was never returned (UK, 419 clients and 508 contractors) | 4.9% of contract value; never returned on 5% (tier 1), 10.8% (tier 2), 13.1% (tier 3) of contracts | - | $245,000 held; a 1-in-20 to 1-in-8 chance of losing all of it | Pye Tait Consulting for BEIS, Retentions in the Construction Industry, 2017 (executive summary; table p.92) |
| Respondents who had ever claimed under security of payment laws (526 Australian respondents) | 23% | - | - | John Murray AM, Review of Security of Payment Laws, Dec 2017 (appendix B) |
| Client-approved change orders (67 Australian public infrastructure projects, one contractor) | 10.6% of original contract value | - | $530,000 of variations to claim | Love, Irani, Smith, Regan & Liu, Cost Performance of Public Infrastructure Projects: The Nemesis and Nirvana of Change-Orders, Production Planning & Control 28(13), 2017 (table 2; free accepted manuscript) |
What we don’t know: how much of that $530,000 a typical contractor fails to claim or recover. What we do know is that the pot is big, the protections go mostly unused, and when a client or head contractor fails, the money is usually gone for good.
Weather
Section titled “Weather”A wet day is the same disease: an entitlement (an extension of time, or delay costs, where the contract gives them) that goes unclaimed while the ground is still wet. Our $5M job has 52 weeks to complete. Then it rains through March, and a heatwave stops work in January. Nothing gets built, so nothing gets claimed, but the site sheds, the supervisor, the hired plant and the crew’s wages keep running. If the job finishes late, liquidated damages start to loom.
No study publishes what weather costs a contractor as a share of contract value. But it can be worked out from three things that are published: how many days weather takes, what a day of standing still costs, and who the contract says pays for it.
A UK modelling study found weather stretches project durations by 21% on average. On our twelve-month job, that’s about two and a half extra months. It’s modelled rather than observed on real sites, and it’s the UK, but it’s the best duration figure we found.
Contracts assume some bad weather is the contractor’s problem. The Transport for NSW major contracts specification prices in 20 wet-weather days out of 226 working days a year. It pays Wet Weather Delay Costs only when the time for completion is more than 52 weeks, only for wet days above a threshold, and only at 50% of a rate TfNSW sets, meant to cover part of the site overheads. Our job has exactly 52 weeks, so it gets none. Queensland’s Transport Infrastructure Contract gives extra time for inclement weather but no delay costs by default. And the standard AS4000 and AS4902 contracts give no relief for weather at all: without an extension of time, the contractor wears the liquidated damages.
What a wet day costs
Section titled “What a wet day costs”Two costs keep running on a day nobody can work.
Time-related site overhead. Preliminaries (site sheds, supervision and site staff, traffic management, insurances) are commonly put at 10% to 20% of the contract sum, and when 30 senior Australian estimators were asked, they put about 45% of preliminaries as time-related for the whole job. On our job that’s $227,000 to $455,000 a year of cost that runs by the day: about $870 to $2,010 per working day, depending on the overhead rate and whether the year has 226 or 261 working days. Twenty wet days is $17,400 to $40,300. If weather stretches the job by 21%, as the UK study found, the extra time-related overhead is $47,800 to $95,500.
The crew. Under the Building and Construction General On-site Award, workers are paid for ordinary hours lost to inclement weather, up to 32 hours in any 4-week period. At the award minimum for a CW3 worker ($29.45 an hour from 1 July 2026), each lost 7.6-hour day costs at least $223.82 per worker, before the civil industry allowance and on-costs. Twenty wet days, as long as they aren’t bunched past the cap, is $4,476 per worker. Multiply by your crew.
Both inputs to the overhead figure are weaker than we’d like. The 10% to 20% is a UK figure from 2002, cited second-hand, and the estimators’ survey was mostly building work. No open Australian civil source gives either number (Rawlinsons would, behind a paywall), so treat the daily rate as a worked example and use your own if you have it.
Heat is growing fast. The Lancet Countdown estimates Australia lost about 175 million potential labour hours to heat in 2024, 161% more than the 1990s average, and construction accounted for 58% of them.
| What was found | % | Amount | On the $5M job | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extra project duration from weather (UK, modelled, not observed) | 21% longer | - | About 2.5 extra months on a 12-month job | Ballesteros-Perez, Smith, Lloyd-Papworth & Cooke, Incorporating the effect of weather in construction scheduling and management with sine wave curves, Construction Management and Economics, 2018 (abstract) |
| Wet-weather days priced into the labour rate (NSW transport contracts) | About 8.8% of working days | 20 of 226 days a year | About 20 wet days already your risk | Transport for NSW, QA Specification TS 01566 (G2-C2) General Requirements (Major Contracts), Ed 5/Rev 26, Feb 2024 (table E2.1) |
| When Wet Weather Delay Costs are paid | 50% of a rate set by TfNSW, covering part of site overheads | Only when the time for completion is more than 52 weeks, and only above a threshold number of wet days | Nothing: our job has exactly 52 weeks | Same specification (clause 43; guide notes p.13; annexure B) |
| Delay costs for inclement weather (Queensland) | - | Extension of time, but no delay costs by default | Time, not money | Transport and Main Roads, Transport Infrastructure Contract General Conditions (C7830), May 2026 (clauses 35.5, 36) |
| Preliminaries as a share of the contract sum; the share that’s time-related for the whole job | 10% to 20% (UK, secondary); 45.49% time-related | - | $227,000 to $455,000 a year; $870 to $2,010 per working day; $17,400 to $40,300 for 20 wet days | O’Leary & Vaz-Serra, Challenges in pricing preliminaries costs for contractors: An Australian case study, Organization, Technology and Management in Construction 17, 2025 (introduction, citing Chan & Pasquire 2002; table 6, 30 Australian estimators) |
| Pay for ordinary hours lost to inclement weather; CW3 minimum rate | - | Up to 32 hours per 4 weeks; $29.45 an hour | At least $223.82 per worker per lost day; $4,476 per worker for 20 wet days | Fair Work Commission, Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 (clause 24.7; schedule B.1.1) |
| Weather relief under AS4000 and AS4902 | - | None | Liquidated damages risk if no extension of time | Golovanoff, Rain, rain, go away: Inclement weather in construction contracts, Holding Redlich, 9 Mar 2025 |
| Labour hours lost to heat in Australia (2024, modelled) | 161% above the 1990s average; construction 58% | About 175 million hours | - | Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, 2025 Australia Data Sheet (indicator 1.1.3) |
What we don’t know: the real daily overhead on an Australian civil job this size, and how many days a typical job actually loses to weather. The dollars above are built from those two, so they’re a worked example, not a measurement. What’s clear is that contracts are written so the contractor carries most of it.
See how weather gets correlated against your site records →
See the registers that catch forfeited entitlements →
4. Disputes
Section titled “4. Disputes”The drainage variation from the last section doesn’t get paid. The contractor pushes; the client pushes back. Letters turn into lawyers, and a year later both sides have spent a small fortune arguing about it.
There’s good evidence on how much is at stake and what it costs to fight, but it comes mostly from large projects that were already in trouble. No verified figure exists for the cost of resolving a dispute as a share of contract value.
Across 2,200+ projects in HKA’s caseload, sums in dispute averaged 33.4% of the contract budget. On our job, that would be $1,670,000, but HKA’s projects are mostly disputed megaprojects, so treat that as the ceiling of the range, not the typical case. In North America, Arcadis found disputes took 12.5 months to resolve on average.
The fight itself is expensive. In ICC arbitrations, 83% of the total cost was each side’s own lawyers, experts and witnesses, not the tribunal. And a study of 44 US projects, cited by CPR, found that even negotiating a dispute cost US$330,199 per project on average, rising past US$1.1 million for mediation or arbitration. Those were larger US projects, so the dollar figures won’t shrink neatly to our job. But negotiation alone at that cost would be around 6.6% of a $5M contract.
Here at home, Queensland adjudicators awarded A$81.9 million of the A$957.0 million claimed in 2024-25, about 8.6 cents in the dollar. If our contractor claimed $530,000 at that rate, they’d be awarded about $45,400. One A$634 million claim drags that average down a long way, though, so it’s the least reliable number in this section.
| What was found | % | Amount | On the $5M job | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sums in dispute (2,200+ projects, 114 countries, skewed to disputed megaprojects) | 33.4% of contract budget | US$2.43 trillion of capex studied | $1,670,000 in dispute | HKA, CRUX Insight Eighth Annual Report, Nov 2025 (report summary; the full report needs a sign-up) |
| Average dispute value and time to resolve (North America) | 80% of claims were US$25m or less | US$60.1m in 2024, up from US$43.0m; 12.5 months | About a year of management time | Arcadis, Construction Disputes in Motion (32MB PDF), 2025 (pp.6-8) |
| Party costs (lawyers, experts, witnesses) as a share of arbitration costs (221 ICC awards, all sectors) | 83% | - | 83 cents of every arbitration dollar | ICC, Decisions on Costs in International Arbitration, 2015 (p.5) |
| Average cost to resolve, per project (44 US projects) | - | Negotiation US$330,199; mediation US$1,212,433; arbitration US$1,167,182 | Negotiation alone would be ~6.6% of the contract (doesn’t scale down cleanly) | Secondary: Gebken, PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2006, as cited in CPR, Construction Briefing, 15 Jul 2010 |
| Adjudication awards vs claims (214 Queensland decisions, 2024-25) | About 8.6% awarded | A$81.9m of A$957.0m | About $45,400 awarded on a $530,000 claim (skewed by one A$634m claim) | QBCC, Annual Report 2024-2025 (table 23) |
What we don’t know: what a dispute costs a contractor as a share of the contract, start to finish. The money at stake is clearly large and the fight is clearly expensive, mostly in people’s time, but the numbers come from the biggest, messiest projects.
See the registers that catch disputes →
5. Non-compliance
Section titled “5. Non-compliance”Someone on the $5M job is hurt. Or a certification lapses quietly, and a prequalification panel notices before you do.
There’s solid national data on what non-compliance costs in total, and it’s consistent that most of that cost falls on workers and the public, not the employer. Costs per incident are measured. Total contractor exposure as a share of contract value isn’t.
Safe Work Australia put the total cost of work-related injury and illness at $61.8 billion in 2012-13, with $5.84 billion of it in construction. Employers bore only 5% of that total, or about 19% if you count workers’ compensation premiums. The UK looks almost identical: the HSE found employers carried about £4.3 billion of a £22.9 billion total, about 19%.
Per incident, the employer’s share ranges from about $1,200 for a short absence to $97,408 for a fatality. That fatality figure is only 2.23% of the total cost, which works out to about $4.4 million in total cost to everyone, nearly the whole value of our $5M job, from a single death.
Then there are the penalties. A Category 1 WHS offence can cost a corporation up to $17.0 million under Commonwealth law, and industrial manslaughter up to $20 million in NSW: three to four times the value of our entire job.
| What was found | % | Amount | On the $5M job | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total cost of work-related injury and illness to employers, workers and the community (Australia, 2012-13) | 4.1% of GDP | $61.8 billion; construction $5.84 billion | - | Safe Work Australia, The Cost of Work-related Injury and Illness for Australian Employers, Workers and the Community: 2012-13, Nov 2015 (executive summary; table 2.3b) |
| Employers’ share of that total | 5% excluding workers’ comp premiums; ~19% including them | - | - | Same report (paras 89, 92) |
| Employer cost per accident, from a short absence to a fatality | 58.82% to 2.23% of each accident’s total cost | $1,200 to $97,408 | $97,408 direct for a fatality; ~$4.4 million total cost to everyone | Allison, Hon & Xia, Construction accidents in Australia: Evaluating the true costs, Safety Science 120:886-896, 2019 (tables 6-7; free author version) |
| Employers’ share of workplace injury and illness costs (Great Britain, 2023/24) | About 19% | £4.3 billion of £22.9 billion | - | HSE, Costs to Britain of workplace injuries and ill health, 2025 (COST01) |
| Maximum penalties: Category 1 WHS offence (corporation, Commonwealth); industrial manslaughter (NSW) | - | Up to $17.0 million; up to $20 million | 3.4 to 4 times the contract value | Safe Work Australia, cross-jurisdictional table of penalties, as at August 2025 |
What we don’t know: the cost of losing standing altogether: dropped from a licence, a panel or a prequalification list. That’s the part of non-compliance a contractor fears most, and no study puts a dollar figure on it. It’s also why non-compliance ranks last here on measured cost, not on how much it matters.
See how Protection watches your standing →
What this means for you
Section titled “What this means for you”This order is the default. It decides the order the diseases show up in during setup, and the order we build detection for each one. It isn’t a claim about your business. A contractor with a run of disputed variations, or one heading into a wet season, may reasonably rank them differently. Setup lets you put the five in whatever order matters to you.
If you find a figure here that doesn’t match its source, or a better study we missed, we want to know.
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- The overrun that never happens - the five diseases and where each lives in the platform
- Register catalog - every register, grouped by domain and by disease
Talk to the team
Tell us what you run - your ERP, field, payroll and document systems - and we will show you the registers Demiton would fill from them, on your data, in a 30-minute call.