Guide · Approvals vs completions
An approval isn’t a home.
It’s permission to start one.
Approvals describe intent; completions describe delivery. The two have drifted apart, and a lot sits in the gap between them. The same gap shows up inside a building business: a signed contract isn’t a finished job, and managing off the wrong number hides where you really are.
Written by Brad Caldon, Founder, VIABUILD. Licensed builder (NSW) · Registered Building Practitioner (Class 1 to 9) · B.Construction Management (Hons)
01 / The basics
In plain English
A dwelling approval is council permission to proceed. It’s a useful early signal, and it’s the figure most often quoted in headlines and quarterly updates. But it is not the same thing as a home being delivered, and the distance between the two has grown.
Quite a lot sits between an approval and a completion:
- Finance has to be locked in.
- Materials have to be procured against lead times that remain unpredictable.
- Trades have to be scheduled against a well-documented skilled-labour shortage.
- Site conditions, weather, design variations and contractual disputes have to be navigated.
- An elevated rate of builder insolvency has run through the sector since 2022.
Build times have also lengthened materially since 2019, so the relationship between an approval and a completion is no longer what older assumptions expected. And approvals include projects that never proceed in their original form. They get extended, redesigned, sold or quietly shelved, particularly multi-unit work that can’t be made to stack up.
The metrics that actually describe delivery
- Commencements: work that has actually started.
- Completions: homes people can move into.
- Conversion rate: how many approvals become commencements.
- Time from approval to occupancy: how long delivery really takes.
The same logic applies inside a single building business. A pipeline of signed contracts isn’t delivered revenue, and a job that’s “underway” isn’t a job that’s progressing. If you manage off what’s been won rather than what’s actually moving toward completion, the picture flatters you, right up until a stalled job surprises everyone.
02 / The reality
Where builders get stuck
Managing off the wrong number
Treating signed or approved work as good as delivered. It reads like a healthy business until the jobs have to actually move.
A pipeline that won’t convert
Work that looks committed but stalls on finance, design changes or feasibility. The conversion rate from “won” to “building” is the number nobody watches.
Lead times and labour
Material lead times and trade availability sit between a start and a finish, and a schedule that ignores them quietly slips week by week.
No view of true progress
Percentage complete guessed by feel rather than tied to real milestones means you can’t tell a job that’s moving from one that’s parked.
Stalled jobs found late
A build that’s gone quiet costs holding and carry every week it sits. The longer it takes to surface, the more it costs.
Time-to-complete invisible
If you don’t measure how long jobs take from start to handover, you can’t forecast delivery, cash or capacity with any confidence.
03 / The fix
A workflow that holds up
- 01
Separate won from building
Track each job through approval → commencement → completion, so you always know what’s actually in production, not just what’s signed.
- 02
Watch your conversion rate
Measure how reliably contracted work becomes started work, and chase the ones that stall before they go cold.
- 03
Tie progress to the schedule
Base percentage complete on real milestones and dependencies, not gut feel, so “progress” means something.
- 04
Plan around lead times
Build procurement and trade availability into the schedule so a start actually leads to a finish.
- 05
Surface stalled jobs early
Flag jobs that have gone quiet against their baseline so holding cost doesn’t accumulate unnoticed.
- 06
Measure time to handover
Track real build duration across jobs so you can forecast delivery, cash and capacity, not just intent.
04 / The tooling
How software helps
The gap between intent and delivery is a visibility problem. The reason approvals get quoted and completions get missed is that intent is easy to count and delivery is hard to see. Inside a building business it’s the same: contracts are easy to total, real progress is the harder number.
Software helps by tying progress to a real schedule, keeping cost and claims current against each stage, and rolling it all up across the portfolio, so you can see which jobs are genuinely moving, which have stalled, and how long delivery actually takes. That turns a business run on signed contracts into one run on real completions.
05 / In practice
Where VIABUILD fits
VIABUILD shows real progress to completion, not just what’s been won.
VIABUILD ties progress to a real schedule with dependencies, milestones and baseline tracking, so percentage complete reflects work actually done. Progress claims track what you’ve billed by stage, cost tracking shows budget vs committed vs actual live, and ViaSite captures real site progress from the field.
Across every job, that gives you a portfolio view of what’s genuinely in production, what’s stalled, and how long delivery is taking, so you manage by completions, not by a pipeline of intent.
- Schedule with real dependencies & baselines
- Progress tied to milestones, not gut feel
- Claims tracked by stage
- Budget vs committed vs actual, live
- Field progress via ViaSite
- Portfolio view of true delivery
06 / FAQ
Common questions.
A building (or dwelling) approval is council permission to proceed, an early indicator that a project can go ahead. A completion is a finished home someone can move into. A lot sits between the two: finance, procurement, trades, site conditions, weather, variations and the risk of a project being redesigned, sold or shelved, so approvals consistently overstate how many homes actually get delivered.
Because an approval only clears the first hurdle. Finance still has to settle, materials and trades have to be secured against real lead times and a labour shortage, and build times have lengthened. Some approved projects never proceed in their original form at all. The result is a widening gap between approvals and completions.
Commencements, completions, the conversion rate from approval to commencement, and the time from approval to occupancy. Those describe the homes people actually move into, rather than intent. The same metrics (won vs started vs completed, and how long delivery takes) describe whether a single building business is really delivering.
A pipeline of signed contracts isn’t delivered work, just as approvals aren’t completions. If you manage off what’s been won rather than what’s genuinely progressing, stalled jobs and slipping schedules stay hidden. Tracking each job from approval through commencement to completion, against a real schedule, keeps you honest about where you actually are.
About the author
Brad Caldon
Founder, VIABUILD
Brad Caldon is the founder of VIABUILD and a builder and property developer with nearly two decades across residential construction and development. He holds a NSW Home Builder Licence, is a Registered Building Practitioner across Class 1 to Class 9 buildings, and holds a Bachelor of Construction Management (Building) (Honours) from the University of Newcastle.
More about VIABUILD →07 / Keep reading
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