Industry Leaders EP10 with Matthew Mackey

Seton Walsh-Rose sits down with Matthew Mackey — National Service Lead for Cost & Commercial Management at Arcadis and founder of Property Leaders Brisbane. Originally from the north of England, Matthew arrived in Brisbane in 2010 knowing no one, stepping down from a director role in Manchester to a senior cost manager position to crack a new market. Sixteen years on, he leads a national cost team he built from two people to twenty-five, and founded one of Queensland’s most active industry communities. This conversation was recorded days before he returned to the UK for good.

The conversation spans Matthew’s career across two markets, the real mechanics of business development in the built environment, the cost story most of the industry misremembers, and a frank look at the road to the 2032 Olympics — cost escalation, the tier-one and labour squeeze, why modular construction stalls without pipeline surety, the role government must play, and how AI is already changing the desk even if site delivery still runs on people.

Episode Chapters

• 00:10 Welcome & Introduction
• 00:23 The Role & Building the Team
• 01:39 From Preston to Brisbane
• 04:28 UK vs Australian QS
• 06:30 Founding Property Leaders Brisbane
• 11:16 First Thursday Club & the Shovel Podcast
• 14:40 Real Business Development
• 17:42 “Hard to Get Into Brisbane”
• 21:34 The Cost Story Nobody Believes
• 23:30 2023: +14.5% in a Single Year
• 25:44 The Quiet Market & Predictions to 2032
• 28:34 Labour, Trades & the Tier-One Squeeze
• 34:07 “No Silver Bullet” — The 15 Levers
• 38:29 Politics, Election Cycles & Surety
• 42:35 Why We Don’t Build Homes Like Cars
• 46:00 Who’s Doing Modular Well
• 47:44 Why Government Must Drive the Market
• 51:18 AI in Construction — Desk vs Site
• 54:08 The Three-Tier Labour Market & Unions
• 57:05 $250k Trades & What Drives Cost
• 58:13 Book Recommendation
• 59:09 Reflections & Thanks

Key Takeaways

• Relationships are the real pipeline
• Business development is consistency, not lead-counting
• The cost number nobody believes
• The quiet market is the calm before the storm
• There’s no silver bullet — there are ~15 levers
• You can’t get production-line economics from one-off thinking
• Certainty unlocks investment — and government must move first
• AI changes the desk before it changes the site
• Labour, not materials, is the real 2032 bottleneck
• Leadership is a skill you keep earning

Sound Bites / Quotes:
“It’s very hard to get into Brisbane when you’re in Brisbane if you don’t have relationships.”
— Matthew Mackey, ~17:42

“If you’re going to build relationships you will get opportunities ultimately, but it’s not overnight — it’s being consistent in that approach. And for me, that’s what business development is.”
— Matthew Mackey, ~15:30

“From about 2000 to 2019, construction costs year on year went up by about one to one and a half percent.”
— Matthew Mackey, ~21:34

References & Resources

• Neil Gull — Matthew’s long-time colleague who joined him to start Arcadis’ Australian cost business in 2017.
• Mitchell Brandtman — Brisbane quantity surveying firm Matthew first joined on arriving in Australia.
• RICS — Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (UK professional body).
• AIQS — Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (https://www.aiqs.com.au).
• Brisbane 2032 Olympic & Paralympic Games — the infrastructure pipeline driving the conversation.
• Queen’s Wharf Brisbane — major project referenced re labour competition and trades being poached.
• Cross River Rail — referenced re repeated business cases across changes of government.
• Queensland productivity / infrastructure review — referenced; Property Leaders contributed recommendations on pipeline surety.
• MMC — Modern Methods of Construction (umbrella term for prefab, modular, panelised and volumetric building).
• DFMA — Design for Manufacture and Assembly.
• ECI — Early Contractor Involvement.
• GMP — Guaranteed Maximum Price.
• GFC — Global Financial Crisis (the catalyst for Matthew’s move to Australia).