Commercial and childcare project costs from delivered work

Figures

Individual project totals, GST-inclusive

Full spread across the six: A$1,374,364 to A$15,332,674. That is an eleven-fold range across five building types, which is the point of the table rather than a finding within it.

The one comparison the data supports. The two childcare developments, both NSW, both estimated within twelve days of each other, came in at A$6,051,549 and A$5,846,017. They sit 3.5% apart. Two observations are not a benchmark, but two independent NSW childcare projects landing within 3.5% is worth recording as a case pair.

Derived per-unit figure, arithmetic only. The 25-dwelling townhouse development divides to A$613,307 per dwelling. This is the total divided by the dwelling count, not a measured per-dwelling cost, and the estimate was not broken down by dwelling in the job record. It is given because a reader will otherwise do the division themselves.

Cost per square metre — six individual case rates

The floor area for each of these projects was recovered from the source architectural drawings and the delivered packs. There is no median below, for the same reason there is none above.

Where each area came from, and what kind of area it is

None of these is a planning GFA taken off a planning document. Every figure is either the architect's own stated area from a drawing area schedule, or a measured construction area. Where a planning GFA existed and differed, it is recorded in the flags below and was not used.

Read these rates one at a time

The two childcare centres do not converge on a rate, even though their totals nearly do. Their totals sit 3.5% apart. Their rates sit 37% apart, at A$4,743/m² and A$3,463/m². Both are two-storey childcare centres over car parking, and the difference is in how much car park is counted in the denominator. Two observations were never a benchmark. On a per-square-metre basis they are not even close.

Childcare (A) is the clearest warning in this article. Its planning GFA is 339 m². Its constructed floor plate is 1,276 m², because a suspended first-floor slab and an at-grade car park slab carry cost but do not count as planning GFA. Pricing this project on its 339 m² planning GFA gives A$17,851/m², which is not a construction rate, it is an artefact of dividing by the wrong number. The delivered pack flags this in terms of its own: pricing on the GFA basis understates the build by a factor of 3.76. This is the single most important reason not to take a planning GFA off a DA document and call it a construction rate.

The highway service centre rate is real and nearly useless. A$13,548/m² is arithmetically correct and materially misleading. The building is 1,104 m² sitting on a 3-hectare site, and most of the money is in forecourt, civil works and external infrastructure rather than in the building. The delivered pack states the building base-build rate separately at A$2,043/m². Anyone benchmarking a building against A$13,548/m² is benchmarking a car park and a highway interchange.

The 25-dwelling townhouse rate depends heavily on which area you accept. On the priced area of 6,131 m², which includes unenclosed porches, alfrescos, balconies and roof terraces, the rate is A$2,501/m². On the enclosed floor area plus garages, 4,619 m², it is A$3,320/m². The first is the denominator the delivered pack itself uses. The second is closer to what a conventional building area would count. They are 33% apart on the same project.

The two refurbishment rates are the most comparable pair here, at A$4,856/m² and A$6,009/m², both on existing buildings being refitted. Two observations across two different building types in two jurisdictions is not a benchmark, but it is the only pairing in this table where the projects, the areas and the scope types are of a similar kind.

Flags on individual figures

One project in this set is a regional highway service centre, not a building of a single use. The source drawings show a 24-hour facility with a fuel shop, three drive-through food tenancies, a forecourt canopy and a driver's lounge, on a 3-hectare site. That shape is why its rate per square metre behaves the way it does below.

The totals recorded against these six jobs include GST. The residential totals in the companion articles do not. This was established by dividing each total by the floor area and comparing against the rate the delivered pack prints for the same project. On three of the six the recorded total is exactly 1.1 times the pack's own ex-GST rate multiplied by the area, to four decimal places. The two populations are therefore not on the same basis and must not be compared directly. A residential total in the companion articles is a net figure before the builder's margin and before GST. A commercial total here is after both.

The floor area recorded in one delivered pack is not supported by any source document. The fast-food refurbishment pack states a building area of 400 m² and prints a rate of A$3,436/m² on that basis. The figure 400 m² appears in no drawing and in no specification for that project. The architect's own area schedules, which appear on two separate drawings and agree arithmetically, give 283.00 m² of enclosed restaurant and 326.10 m² including 43.70 m² of unenclosed external seating. The rate published in this article uses the architect's 283.00 m². The A$3,436/m² printed on that delivered pack should not be relied on.

Planning GFA and construction floor area differ enormously on these projects, and the planning figure is the wrong one. Where both existed, this article uses the construction area. The differences are not small — the first childcare development records a planning GFA of 339 m² against a constructed floor plate of 1,276 m², a factor of 3.76. The second records a planning GFA of 595 m², a floor space ratio area of 710 m², and a construction floor area of 1,688 m². The ACT service station carries an architect's stated 496 m² against a 473 m² figure declared on a water authority form. In every case the planning number is smaller, because planning definitions exclude car parking, plant, lifts and stairs, all of which cost money to build.

The 25-dwelling townhouse development has no stated GFA in any supplied document. Its drawings never use the term. The area used here is the priced area schedule carried in the delivered bill of quantities, which originates in a workbook supplied by the client rather than in a measurement of ours. It is corroborated to within 1.3% by the project's 25 individual energy-rating certificates, which is the strongest independent check available for that job. The 25-dwelling count is corroborated five separate ways.

Childcare development (A), A$6,051,549. This job record reads status COMPLETED, and its own site label carries the words *held, not yet sent*. The two contradict each other. The estimate was produced and its deliverable files are sealed against the record, but the record does not evidence that it reached the client. The figure is published as an estimate that was produced. It is not evidence of a project delivered to a client, and it should not be cited as one.

No project in this table has a recorded release to a client. Five of the six are marked customer-visible and all six carry sealed deliverable files, but none carries a client-release timestamp on its job record. A completed status in this dataset means the estimate finished, not that it was transmitted and accepted.

Two of six states are read from the site label, not from a recorded state profile. The highway service centre and the food outlet refurbishment have no state recorded in the regional pricing profile on the job record. Both site names are unambiguously NSW localities, and NSW is stated on that basis.

The 25-dwelling townhouse development is residential construction at a commercial scale. It sits in this article because its job record carries no dwelling-type classification and its value belongs with commercial-scale work. It is not a commercial building. Anyone comparing it to the service centre or the childcare centres is comparing across building types.

All six carry a recorded service price of zero. These estimates were not billed at the published residential price points. Nothing in this article informs what an estimating pack costs.

Basis

• Source: EstiFlow production job records, filtered to status COMPLETED with a construction total above zero, then to records carrying no residential dwelling-type classification. That returns exactly six projects.
• Completion dates: 24 July 2026 to 5 August 2026, a twelve-day window.
• Delivery evidence: all six have deliverable files sealed against the job record with content hashes.
• Currency: Australian dollars. The totals recorded against these six jobs are GST-inclusive, which is set out under basis below.
• Anonymisation: project identity, client identity, site address, institution name and brand are withheld. State-level geography and building type are given.

What moves the number

Building type does more than size. Five building types are represented and none of them prices like another. A childcare centre carries compliance-driven cost — regulated outdoor play area, shade structures, acoustic separation, specific sanitary provision, fencing and gate hardware, safety glazing — that has no equivalent in a warehouse or an office tenancy of the same floor plate. A highway service centre carries fuel storage and dispensing, forecourt canopies and heavy-vehicle pavement, where the building is the minor part of the job. A food outlet carries mechanical exhaust, grease management, fire suppression over cooking equipment and a fitout to an operator specification. These are not the same product at different sizes.

Refurbishment and new build are different disciplines. The food outlet at A$1,374,364 and the ACT commercial tender at A$2,980,668 are tender-stage work on existing structures. Refurbishment cost is driven by what has to be removed, what has to stay operating, and what is found once demolition starts. New-build cost is driven by what is drawn. The uncertainty sits in different places and a benchmark drawn from one does not transfer to the other.

Occupied-site staging is a cost, not a schedule note. Work on an operating retail tenancy or a trading service centre is priced with out-of-hours labour, temporary separation, staged handover and repeated establishment. The same scope on a vacant site is cheaper for reasons that have nothing to do with the scope.

The two NSW childcare centres land 3.5% apart on total and 37% apart on rate. That gap is the most instructive thing in this article. Two projects of the same type in the same state can produce nearly the same total for quite different buildings, and a total that looks like convergence dissolves as soon as it is divided by a floor area. It is recorded because it is the clearest available demonstration that a total and a rate are not interchangeable evidence.

What's excluded

These are construction cost totals. They do not include:

• Land acquisition, stamp duty and finance costs.
• Statutory and authority fees. These are enumerated as line items in the delivered packs and are never priced into a total. For a NSW project the set enumerated is the NSW Home Building Compensation Fund contribution where applicable, the Long Service Levy where applicable, and council contributions where conditioned. Section 7.11 and 7.12 developer contributions, water authority headworks and Section 68 approvals fall in the same class. For an ACT project the equivalent set is the ACT building approval and territory authority requirements applicable to the works. All are listed and excluded because the amounts are set by the authority and by the conditions of consent rather than by the builder, and on commercial-scale work they can be a material figure in their own right.
• GST is included in the totals, not excluded. See the basis note below. The ex-GST column in the rate table is the GST-inclusive figure divided by 1.1.
• Professional fees. Architectural, engineering, certification, surveying, town planning, fire engineering and access consultancy fees are outside the construction total.
• Loose furniture, fittings and equipment. On a childcare centre and a food outlet this is a significant separate budget. Only fixed and built-in work is inside these totals.
• Operator or brand fitout supplied under a separate contract. Where a tenant, franchisor or operator supplies equipment directly, it is outside the construction total.
• Decanting, temporary accommodation and business interruption on occupied sites.
• Client-side contingency. Where a contingency appears inside an estimate it is disclosed as a line, not folded silently into the total.

About this dataset

EstiFlow is not a registered quantity surveying practice, and the documents behind these figures are not certified quantity surveying reports. They are cost estimates, bills of quantities and estimating packs produced from the architectural drawings and supporting documents supplied for each project.

Six projects is too few to benchmark from. The table is published so that the figures are on the record and traceable, not so that a reader can generalise from them. Where a reader needs a commercial construction benchmark with a defensible sample size, this is not it.

Figures dated 2026-09-01.