Canberra crane count climbs to 28, index up 27% in six months

Rider Levett Bucknall’s Q3 2026 Crane Index, published 23 September, counted 28 tower cranes across greater Canberra, up from 22 in the April edition, as the Territory’s index score rose to 560 points from 440. Sixteen cranes went up over the six months and 10 came down, a net gain of six, the survey shows.

Why it matters

The gain matters because Canberra grew faster than the country as a whole. The Territory’s crane count and index score both rose 27.27% over the six months to Q3, against a national gain of 6.7% to a record 896 cranes, RLB’s Q3 2026 release and The Urban Developer’s 24 September report on it show. For a Canberra-based builder or trade contractor reading the pipeline, that gap signals the Territory’s construction cycle is accelerating faster than the national average, at least for one quarter.

Residential sites now account for 14 of Canberra’s 28 cranes, or 50% of the total, with commercial sites making up 10 (35.7%), aged care two, hotel one and mixed use one, per RLB’s sector breakdown. That split confirms residential and commercial construction, rather than civic or health projects, are driving most of the Territory’s crane mobilisations this cycle.

The crane survey lands the same month two large Canberra residential applications are moving through the system. Peet has lodged a DA for 128 townhouses in the first stage of its Bruce neighbourhood project, and Core Developments is seeking to lift its approved Denman Prospect site from 27 homes to 154 apartments, with public comment open until 2 November. Neither application has cranes on site yet, since both remain at the proposal stage, but they point to where the Territory’s residential crane count could move if approved and mobilised.

For a developer weighing where to commit next, the composition matters more than the headline total. A Territory adding cranes mostly to residential sites, as Canberra is now doing at 50%, signals private apartment projects moving from approval into construction rather than public works. RLB’s own addition-and-removal tally, 16 up against 10 down, shows Canberra’s pipeline is still net adding sites faster than it is completing them.

The numbers

RLB’s weighted index, which accounts for crane size and height rather than a simple head count, rose to 560 points from 440, a gain of 120 points or 27.27%, the Q3 2026 report states. Nationally, the index reached 210 points, with the residential component climbing from 150 to 166 points and non-residential from 323 to 330, RLB’s national release shows.

Canberra’s 28 cranes now match Adelaide’s 28 for the same quarter, though Adelaide’s index sits lower at 467 points against Canberra’s 560, according to RLB’s respective Q3 2026 editions. Canberra remains well below Sydney’s 336 and Melbourne’s record 224, but its 27.27% six-month growth rate outpaced both those markets, where Sydney’s count fell from 346 to 336 and Melbourne added a net 21 cranes to reach its record, according to the same RLB report carried by The Urban Developer on 24 September.

What’s next

RLB publishes the index twice yearly, so the next Canberra reading is due around April 2027. Builders tendering residential or commercial fit-out packages in the Territory currently have six more live crane sites to bid into than in April, on RLB’s own count.

Whether that count keeps climbing depends partly on applications still working through the Territory Plan process. If EPSDD decisions on the Bruce and Denman Prospect proposals land before the April 2027 survey and both proceed to construction, Canberra’s residential crane share could extend further past the 50% mark it has just reached. Until then, the 28 cranes RLB counted in September remain the only confirmed read on how much of that pipeline has actually left the page.