A survey of 335 businesses in the Australian road industry has been carried out to ascertain those factors that make firms innovate. 'Innovative' is measured by adoption rates of advanced technologies and practices, and the range of innovation drivers reviewed encompasses business strategy and environment. The findings indicate that business strategies are more important than business conditions, and that the following three strategies are significant in differentiating between firms with high and low adoption rates: (1) hiring new graduates; (2) introducing new technologies; and (3) enhancing technical capabilities. The findings also highlight the importance of undertaking R&D and encouraging employee ideas for improvement. The public policy implications are that the quality of university graduates should be protected and advanced, as should technical skills within public sector client agencies.

Survey results provide a preliminary assessment of the relative contribution of a range of tactical business strategies to innovation performance by firms in the Australian construction industry. Over 1,300 firms were surveyed in 2004, resulting in a response rate of 29%. Respondents were classified as high, medium or low innovators according to an innovation index based on the novelty and impact of their innovations and their adoption of listed technological and organizational advances. The relative significance of 23 business strategies concerning (1) employees, (2) marketing, (3) technology, (4) knowledge and (5) relationships was examined by determining the extent to which they distinguished high innovators from low innovators. The individual business strategies that most strongly distinguished high innovators were (1) 'investing in R&D', (2) 'participating in partnering and alliances on projects', (3) 'ensuring project learnings are transferred into continuous business processes', (4) 'monitoring international best practice', and (5) 'recruiting new graduates'. Of the five types of strategies assessed, marketing strategies were the least significant in supporting innovation. The results provide practical guidance to managers in project-based industries wishing to improve their innovation performance.

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New or expanded agricultural industries in northern Australia require efficient and reliable supply chains and transport to domestic and international markets. A major challenge in the north is long transport distances of over 1000km between production and markets, along a sparse rural road/rail network that is largely unsealed and disrupted by seasonal flooding. To provide a comprehensive view of transport logistics costs and benefits due to infrastructure investments and regulatory changes in agriculture supply chains, the Australian Government commissioned CSIRO to develop the Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TraNSIT). TraNSIT optimises transport routes for up to hundreds of thousands of enterprises and millions of vehicle trips between farms and their markets, providing modelled input into operational and investment decisions. As part of a major Australian Government initiative, TraNSIT was used to directly inform the A$100 million 2016 Beef Roads Program targeting transport infrastructure investments across northern Australia. It was used to evaluate the transport savings for 60 road upgrade submissions, where the total construction cost exceeded A$3 billion. This paper highlights the innovations and experiences of using TraNSIT to inform the Beef Roads Program.

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The BRITE (Building Research Information Technology and Environment) project was established by the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation to encourage innovation in the construction industry. While innovation is generally perceived to be broadly beneficial, there has been little formal study of its occurrence or impact in Australian construction or of the factors which foster an innovative atmosphere within an enterprise. In order to benchmark innovation performance, the BRITE project conducted a survey in 2004 into the nature, incidence and variety of technological and organisational innovations in various sectors of the industry. With some exceptions, the survey found that clients and consultants engaged in significantly higher levels of innovation than did suppliers, main contractors or trade contractors. Within the industry sectors those organisations classified as high innovators favoured the adoption of advanced management practices and had formal evaluation systems in place to judge their progress. They reported significant positive impacts on their profitability from innovation and can therefore provide instructive examples for the rest of the industry to follow.

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