TLDR – The 30-Second Read
Across Australia, water utilities and governments have committed to their largest capital programs in over a decade, through economic-regulatory determinations and funded megaprojects. Every one of those decisions locks in money and a delivery date one to three years before the team that delivers the work is needed. Read as a finance milestone, a determination is a budget. Read as a workforce milestone, it’s a dated, public demand signal for the scarcest people in infrastructure: project directors, commissioning engineers, project controls and commercial specialists. The utilities that map the determination to a hiring plan now will secure that talent before the field fills up. The ones that wait for shovel-ready will compete for an empty pool at a premium.
Why does the funding decision land before the workforce decision?
A water capital program runs on a long fuse. An economic regulator sets a four or five-year revenue path; a government announces a megaproject with a fixed completion date. The money is committed and the timeline is on the public record. But the people who design, build and commission the work aren’t needed on day one. Procurement, detailed design, approvals and early works come first, and the senior delivery team ramps up over the year or two that follows.
That gap is the whole point. By the time a project is visibly shovel-ready, the demand for delivery talent is obvious to everyone, and everyone goes to market at once. The signal that the hiring was coming arrived far earlier, in the determination or the funding announcement. Most utilities file that document with finance and engineering. Treated as a workforce document, it tells you what to hire, roughly how many, and by when.
Which 2028 are we actually talking about?
A lot of Australia’s water funding converges on 2028, but it’s worth being precise, because each 2028 means something different for when you hire.
- In Western Australia, the $2.8 billion Alkimos Seawater Desalination Plant is targeting first water production in 2028. It’s being delivered, and then operated, under an alliance for at least 10 years from 2028. The WA Government says the broader program will create more than 1,500 jobs and inject $1.1 billion into the state economy. First water in 2028 makes the commissioning and operations workforce a 2026-27 hiring task, not a 2028 one.
- In Victoria, the Essential Services Commission has just finalised Melbourne Water’s 2026-31 determination, allowing up to $7.3 billion of investment, a 51% increase on the previous five-year period. Separately, 16 Victorian water businesses reset their prices from 1 July 2028, with submissions due in September 2027. The first is money to spend now; the second is a deadline that pulls planning, and hiring, into 2027.
- In South Australia, ESCOSA’s determination requires SA Water to spend around $1.4 billion of capital over the four years to 30 June 2028.
- In New South Wales, IPART’s final determination lets Sydney Water raise the revenue to fund its capital plans through to June 2030, with a forecast average revenue requirement of $3.7 billion a year, 17% above the previous period.
Different states, different instruments, the same underlying pattern: the dollars and the dates are already public. What isn’t yet decided, in most cases is who delivers the work.
Who does a capital program actually need, and why are they the hardest to hire?
A water build doesn’t need generalists. It needs project directors who have delivered regulated capital projects, commissioning and process engineers, high-voltage and electrical engineers, project controls and scheduling specialists, and the contracts and commercial people who keep the budget intact. These are the same disciplines the energy transition has been competing for, which is the harder part of the puzzle.
Infrastructure Australia has put numbers on the squeeze. Its 2025 Infrastructure Market Capacity Report estimated a shortage of 141,000 infrastructure workers as at October 2025, projected to reach around 300,000 by 2027, with regional shortages forecast to quadruple over that window. The shortfall of engineers, architects and scientists is forecast to peak at roughly 126,000 in late 2026, and demand for project management professionals peaks in mid-2027. Much of Australia’s water build sits in exactly the regional areas the report flags as worst affected.
What does waiting for shovel-ready actually cost?
The instinct is reasonable: don’t hire until the work is funded, approved and ready to start. The problem is that everyone else applies the same logic, and the determinations and megaproject dates are visible to all of them. Wait for shovel-ready and you arrive in the market at the same moment as every other utility and delivery partner reading the same pipeline, at the point Infrastructure Australia expects shortages to be peaking.
We’ve written before about how mobile this particular group is. Across the roughly 280 placements we made between March 2023 and May 2026, concentrated in energy, utilities and engineering, the people who move most readily are the cross-sector delivery specialists, the project directors and commissioning leads whose skills aren’t bound to one infrastructure type. That mobility cuts both ways. It’s why you can attract them from an adjacent sector if you move early, and why you can lose your own people to a better-funded program if you don’t.
How do you turn a determination into a workforce plan?
Start by reading the funding document as a hiring document. A determination or a funded megaproject tells you three things a workforce plan needs:
- The scale of the capital to be delivered
- The disciplines that delivery will require
- The date by which it has to be operational
Working back from that date, through commissioning, construction and design, gives you a rough mobilisation curve for the senior roles.
From there, three moves matter:
- Identify the handful of roles the program can’t proceed without, usually the delivery leadership, commissioning and project controls layer, and treat them as long-lead items, the same way you would a critical piece of plant
- Benchmark them against the real market, which now includes energy and broader infrastructure bidding for the same people, not just other water utilities
- Build the talent map before the brief is urgent. Knowing who exists, where they are and what would move them is far cheaper to work out 18 months ahead than 3 months ahead.
None of this means committing to a hire before the work is real. It means knowing the market before you need it.
Talk to us about your delivery workforce
If you’re mapping a committed capital program to the team that has to deliver it, and want a clear read on where the delivery and leadership talent actually sits before the rest of the market arrive, talk to our team. We run permanent, contractor and executive search across water and gas infrastructure and energy, and we spend our days in the cross-sector delivery market these programs are all hiring from.
Q&A
Because the funding decision lands one to three years before the delivery team is needed, and that decision is public. If you wait until the work is visibly ready, you go to market at the same time as everyone else reading the same pipeline, and at the point national shortages are forecast to peak. Mobilising on the determination means securing scarce delivery talent before competition intensifies.
The senior delivery and leadership roles: project directors, commissioning and process engineers, high-voltage and electrical engineers, project controls and scheduling specialists, and contracts and commercial leads. These are scarce across all of infrastructure, not just water, and in our placement data the senior layer carries the heaviest time-to-fill tail. They’re also the roles a capital program genuinely can’t proceed without.
Work backwards from the operational date. For a plant targeting first water in 2028, the commissioning and operations team is effectively a 2026–27 hiring task once you account for ramp-up. The planning, mapping and benchmarking should start well before that, ideally around 18 months out, while the market is easier to read and the relevant people aren’t yet being chased by every other program.
Increasingly, yes. The disciplines tied to capital delivery, rather than to a specific technology, transfer readily between the two. Infrastructure Australia notes engineers being stretched across energy, water and commercial sectors simultaneously. In our own placements, cross-sector delivery specialists are the most mobile group of all, which means water and energy employers are now drawing on one finite pool.
More than most utilities use it for. A determination sets the capital to be delivered, the programs it funds, and the period it covers. Read as a workforce document, that gives you the scale, the disciplines and the timeframe for your senior hiring, before the demand becomes visible to competitors. It’s a dated, published demand signal sitting inside a document most organisations treat purely as finance.
Sources & References
- Water Corporation – Alkimos Seawater Desalination Plant ($2.8bn; first water 2028; alliance delivery and operation from 2028): https://www.watercorporation.com.au/our-water/desalination/alkimos-seawater-desalination-plant
- Water Corporation / WA Government media release – “more than 1,500 local jobs and $1.1 billion into WA’s economy” (Dec 2024): https://www.watercorporation.com.au/about-us/media-releases/2024/december-2024/major-milestone-in-delivery-of-was-next-major-water-source
- Essential Services Commission (VIC) – Melbourne Water price review 2026 (final decision; up to $7.3bn, 51% increase): https://www.esc.vic.gov.au/water/water-prices-tariffs-and-special-drainage/water-price-reviews/water-price-review-2026/melbourne-water-price-review-2026
- Essential Services Commission (VIC) — water prices page (16 water businesses, prices from 1 July 2028): https://www.esc.vic.gov.au/water/water-prices-tariffs-and-special-drainage ; submissions Sept 2027 (Inside Water): https://insidewater.com.au/victoria-water-price-review
- ESCOSA — SA Water Regulatory Determination 2024 ($1.387bn capex, $Dec22; period 1 July 2024 – 30 June 2028): https://www.escosa.sa.gov.au/projects-and-publications/projects/water/sa-water-regulatory-determination-2024
- IPART — Final Report, Sydney Water prices 2025–2030 (forecast $3.7bn average annual revenue requirement, 17% above previous period): https://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/documents/final-report/final-report-sydney-water-prices-2025-2030-september-2025
- Infrastructure Australia — 2025 Infrastructure Market Capacity Report (141,000 shortage Oct 2025 → ~300,000 by 2027; regional shortages quadrupling; engineers/architects/scientists peak ~126,000 late 2026; PM professionals peak mid-2027): https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/reports/2025-infrastructure-market-capacity-report