Perth crane count jumps to 48, index up 20% in six months
Perth's 20% six-month rise outpaced the national crane count's 6.7% gain, as RLB's Q3 2026 survey recorded 896 cranes operating across Australia, a record total, the report shows.
Rider Levett Bucknall’s Q3 2026 Crane Index, published 23 September, counted 48 tower cranes across greater Perth, up from 40 in the April edition, as the city’s index score jumped to 112 points from 93. Twenty-four cranes went up over the six months and 16 came down, a net gain of eight.
Why it matters
The jump matters because it outpaced the rest of the country. Perth’s crane count rose 20% 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 Perth-based builder or trade contractor reading the pipeline, that gap signals the city has moved from trailing the eastern states’ construction cycle to leading its growth rate, at least for one quarter.
Residential sites now account for 27 of Perth’s 48 cranes, or 56% of the total, up from 21 of 40 cranes (52.5%) in the April edition, per RLB’s figures. That is a smaller shift in composition than Adelaide’s move to 64% residential in the same quarter, per RLB’s Q3 2026 Adelaide report, but it confirms apartment and build-to-rent construction, rather than commercial or health projects, is driving most of Perth’s new crane mobilisations this cycle.
For a developer weighing where to mobilise next, the ratio matters more than the headline total. A city adding cranes mostly to non-residential sites signals public and institutional capital works; a city adding them mostly to residential sites, as Perth is now doing, signals private apartment and build-to-rent projects moving from approval into construction. RLB’s own addition-and-removal tally, 24 cranes up against 16 down, shows Perth’s residential 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 112 points from 93, a gain of 19 points or 20.43%, 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.
Perth’s 48 cranes remain well below Sydney’s 336 and Melbourne’s record 224, but Perth’s six-month growth rate of 20% beat both those markets, where Sydney’s count fell from 346 to 336 and Melbourne added a net 21 cranes, 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 Perth reading is due around April 2027. Builders tendering residential fit-out or formwork packages in Perth currently have eight more live crane sites to bid into than in April, on RLB’s own count, while commercial and health contractors face a comparatively flatter pipeline.
The rising crane count also lands against a soft demand signal. About 20,000 Perth homes are now worth less than their owners paid, with roughly 13,000 owners in negative equity, analyst Gavin Hegney found in a separate market-wide analysis this masthead reported on 21 October. Read together, Perth’s building pipeline is still expanding on RLB’s 20% six-month growth figure even as a meaningful slice of existing owners sit underwater on value, a combination worth carrying into the April 2027 reading.