Construction Work – Code Of Practice

Full Description

‘Construction work’ is defined in the WHS Regulations as any work carried out in connection with the construction, alteration, conversion, fitting-out, commissioning, renovation, repair, maintenance, and refurbishment, demolition, decommissioning or dismantling of a structure.

Construction work can be commercial, civil or housing construction and includes the following:

• any installation or testing carried out in connection with an activity referred to in the above definition
• the removal from the workplace of any product or waste resulting from demolition
• the prefabrication or testing of elements, at a place specifically established for the construction work, for use in construction work
• the assembly of prefabricated elements to form a structure, or the disassembly of prefabricated elements forming part of a structure
• the installation, testing or maintenance of an essential service in relation to a structure
• any work connected with an excavation
• any work connected with any preparatory work or site preparation including landscaping as part of site preparation carried out in connection with an activity referred to in the above definition, or
• an activity referred to in the above definition, carried out on, under or near water including work on buoys and obstructions to navigation.

Contracts covering a project are a good guide to what activities are done in connection with construction. Examples include:

• work by architects or engineers in on-site offices or conducting on-site inspections, but not architects or engineers working in offices away from the construction site
• work by a mechanic on an excavator on-site and not in an isolated service area
• delivering building materials to different points on the site, but not making deliveries to a single designated delivery area
• excavating for a basement garage
• testing fire equipment on the construction site
• supervisors and manager moving around the site to monitor work
• surveying a site after construction has started, but not surveying a greenfield site before construction has started, and
• traffic control on a construction site.

For the purposes of this Code, housing construction work involves construction work relating to the following:

• detached houses
• attached dwellings, separated from each other by a fire resisting wall, such as a terrace, row or town houses
• villa homes, strata or company title home units or residential flats
• boarding and guest houses, hostels or similar with a floor area <300m², and
• ancillary buildings to the above, such as private garages, gazeboes and carports.

The definitions above are based on classes 1, 2 and 10 of the National Construction Code. Work on multistorey buildings, that is above three habitable storeys, is not considered housing construction work for the purposes of this Code.