Construction Activity: Chain Volume Measures, Australia

These spreadsheets contain revised data for some of the chain volume measures series released in Construction Work Done, Australia, Preliminary (cat. no. 8755.0). This data is sourced from, and more comprehensive results are available in Building Activity, Australia (cat. no. 8752.0) and Engineering Construction Activity, Australia (cat. no. 8762.0). The notes below relate to these two publications.

For the March Building Activity release each year, the ABS publishes revisions that have been made to Building Activity data prior to the December quarter. In this release, revisions have been provided back to September 2015. A feature article has been included in the December 2015 Building Activity, Australia (cat no. 8752.0) publication explaining potential sources of revisions in more detail.

Several time series spreadsheets contain 'np' (not available for publication) annotations from the September quarter 2012 onwards. This is due to confidential data being contained in these series.

The ABS is currently monitoring for potential impacts from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) on construction activity statistics and will continue to do so for the period of the pandemic.

Quality assurance of March quarter data did not identify any impact to headline statistics. The designation of construction as an essential service enabled activity to progress despite social distancing restrictions implemented from late March. Since it takes some time to approve and commence an application for building construction work, there will be a lag between any change in demand, the number of applications and subsequent impacts on new work.

The ABS is actively managing the potential risks from COVID-19 to data collection operations. The ABS appreciates the support of survey respondents in continuing to provide the data to compile this publication.

This release includes revisions to Engineering Construction data back to September 2017.

Several time series spreadsheets for recent quarters contain 'np' (not available for publication) annotations. This is due to confidential data being contained in these series.

Trend estimates should be used with caution due to the volatility caused by large engineering projects. For more details on trend estimates, please see paragraphs 22 to 24 of the Methodology.

Mining projects tend to be complex in structure and comprise a number of different investment activities including exploration, engineering construction, plant and equipment and buildings. A feature article released in the March 2012 issue of Private New Capital Expenditure and Expected Expenditure, Australia (cat. no. 5625.0) provides a summary of the conceptual basis of the relevant ABS publications that measure investment in Australia, using a hypothetical mining project to illustrate how this investment is reflected in ABS data.