Queensland's water infrastructure pipeline is gaining momentum

Queensland Government FY26 Budget

The Queensland Government is delivering a $116.8 billion infrastructure capital program over the next 4 years to provide critical infrastructure for the state. [i] The Queensland Budget 2025-26 Capital Statement, released on Tuesday, 24 June 2025, outlines a circa $30 billion investment in public infrastructure, including a circa $1.37B of water infrastructure [ii] investment via the government owned corporations, regional water authorities, and capital grants.

Figure 1: Queensland’s FY26 Capital Investment Share by Infrastructure Category (Queensland Treasury, 2025, pp. 52–53)

Queensland’s FY26 water portfolio aims to enhance water security, flood resilience, and dam reliability. Major investment highlights in FY26 includes a circa $346.2 million on the dam improvement programs, circa $238 million on Fitzroy to Gladstone and Toowoomba to Warwick Pipelines, and circa $14 million to improve the flood resilience of critical assets at Mount Crosby.

FY26 capital investment is over 27% increase from FY25, and the largest spend by Queensland government since Seqwater’s creation in 2008[iii]. In FY26 the highest funding is budgeted to Seqwater, primarily to support dam safety, as the State’s Bulk Water Supply Authority, with the next highest being Sunwater.

Figure 2: FY26 Water Capex by Owner – Seqwater pioneers capital investment (Queensland Treasury, 2025, pp. 52–53)

Seqwater dam upgrades include Wivenhoe, Somerset, North Pine and Lake Macdonald. Other investments are the Toowoomba Warwick Pipeline and Mt Crosby flood resilience. Sunwater also has a dam improvements program and the New Paradise dam wall project.

Figure 3: Seqwater (Left) vs. Sunwater (Right) 2025-26 Capital Budget Overview (Queensland Treasury, 2025, pp. 52–53)

Queensland’s water infrastructure pipeline – A decade of delivery

Queensland’s Strategic Water Infrastructure Plan takes a longer-term view with future investment levels higher than the FY26 budget. Ricardo estimates up to $48B of bulk water infrastructure pipeline over the next 15 years with over $24B publicly announced already across three main themes: dam safety improvements, urban water security and regional economic development, in addition to some in commercial projects.

Considering the serious competition over capital funds across transport, health, social housing, and Olympic games within the next decade, the water sector must compete with these sectors to fund the backlog of critical water security and regional economic development infrastructure. To succeed, the water sector will need to:

• Demonstrate cross-sector productivity – aligning investments with housing, health, and regional development outcomes to access value-based funding.
• Prioritise and sequence – structuring the Strategic Water Infrastructure Plan to deliver high-impact, cost-effective projects and sub-projects early, especially in dam safety and urban water security.
• Innovate financing – including green bonds, PPPs, and value-capture models to lessen reliance on limited Treasury allocations.

As Queensland enters a historic investment phase—with record spending across infrastructure sectors—the water industry must be both strategic and collaborative, to promote water investment’s enabling function to achieve outcomes in housing, health, climate resilience, and regional development.

Strategic challenges

Queensland is on the cusp of a transformative decade for the engineering and construction sector, as highlighted in the 2024 Queensland Major Contractors Association’s QLD Major Projects Pipeline Report.  With over $200 billion in committed and proposed investment through to 2035, Queensland’s infrastructure sector is poised for unprecedented growth. The only comparable period was between 2011 and 2015, which saw a surge in major projects.[iv]

Figure 4: Latest QLD Major Projects Pipeline Report Major Project Activity by Budget Status (Queensland Treasury, 2025, pp. 52–53)

As a result, Queensland faces the capacity challenges of labour, skills, and material. This challenge can only be overcome through achieving a realistic funding profile that supports a growing skilled workforce in Queensland to avoid ‘valley of death’ scenarios as previously experienced in Defence. The QLD water sector is additionally challenged to achieve climate resilience during delivery, adapting programs and projects in live catchments, cities and regions whilst the impacts of climate change occur.

Figure 5: Latest QLD Major Projects Pipeline Report Investment Comparison by Sector (Queensland Treasury, 2025, pp. 52–53)

Effective portfolio governance, innovative funding and procurement, careful planning, regular coordination, prudent engineering, risk and change management and real-time catchment intelligence for responses will all be essential.

Ricardo at Ozwater’25

Ricardo chaired the 'How do we pay for water services in the future?' panel at Ozwater’25 and presented on cost recovery, climate risk, and financial innovation. Strategic meetings were held with major Queensland Water Corporations. Here is a snapshot of the panel’s insights into the Australian water sector’s funding challenges and potential pathways to address the issues.

Ricardo’s role in investment success

Ricardo understands climate change impacts on water utilities and government policy drivers and implications. We use this knowledge to support better decision making by our clients for their pipeline and each capital investment which will have long lives. Our services span strategy, economics, planning, governance and PMO, procurement, engineering, commercial, and O&M advisory.

Let’s build Queensland’s water future

Ricardo’s Australian water and environment team helps Queensland unlock capital and invest it wisely, accelerating approvals, procuring and designing cleverly, delivering practical infrastructure that maximises social returns and achieves environmental outcomes.

Click here to find out how Ricardo can help you tackle challenges across the infrastructure investment life cycle.