The 8 Conditions Commonly Missed in the Building and Construction Award

The Building and Construction Award remains one of the most complex and in-depth modern awards in the Australian employment landscape due to the unique travelling requirements and broad areas of specialisation.

You can also read our Ultimate Building and Construction Award (MA000020) Summary too as well as downloading our eBook which includes a bonus payroll processing checklist to ensure your business is compliant with all of the award requirements.

If you’re looking to gain a better understanding of the travel conditions in the Building and Construction General On-Site Award 2010, we wrote an article that explains everything you need to know about travel conditions.

Below are 8 conditions in the General On-Site Award that are commonly missed by building and construction employers.

Back to top

Back to top

In these situations, the Building and Construction General On-Site Award proposes certain conditions that are applicable when it’s no longer safe to continue work:

1. In this situation, building and construction industry employers or the appropriate representatives must discuss and confirm (in less than 60 minutes) whether to continue work or not.
   
   If it’s deemed unsafe and risks the life and health of the employee, the employer is required to record the period between work ceasing and starting again.
   
   
2. If emergency work is required (such as finishing a concrete pour), the employee must be paid at a rate of double time calculated to the next hour.
   
   If there is wet weather, wet weather gear must be adequately provided. If an employee’s clothes become wet due to work, the employee is able to go home to change to dry working clothes without loss of pay unless they have dry working clothes on hand.
   
   
3. If an employee cannot work because of inclement weather, they will receive payment at the ordinary hourly rate to a maximum of 32 hours in any four week period.
   
   For employees that commenced employment during a four week period, refer to the below table on how much should be credited to the employee:
   
   

   Commenced Working	Hours Credited
   First Week	32 hours
   Second Week	24 hours
   Third Week	16 hours
   Fourth Week	8 hours

4. For part-time employees, they will be entitled to payments based on a pro-rata basis based on the number of agreed hours in the four week period. Below is the calculation that needs to be used:
   
   32 x (Number of hours agreed to worked for the four week period) ÷ 152
   
   
5. If inclement weather occurs during overtime, employees are not entitled to any payment for stoppages in work.
   
   
6. Any parts of the site that aren’t affected by inclement weather must continue to work even though other parts of the site have stopped work.
   
   
7. An employer may transfer an employee to another location on a site if alternative work is available and it’s reasonable and safe to do so

Back to top

Check out our article explaining everything you need to know about travel conditions in the Building & Construction Award.

The article also addresses employers obligations when employees are living away from home and need to perform distant work.

Back to top

Ordinary hours of work are between 7am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Work carried outside of these hours will attract a penalty rate of 150% for the first two hours and 200% thereafter.

The ordinary hours of work are 8 hours per day. For every hour, 0.4 hours are accrued towards a rostered day off (RDO). This means that an RDO of 7 ½ hours will be accrued every 19 days of work.

Back to top

Below are the shift work hours of work for the civil construction sector:

Back to top

According to the General On-Site Award, day workers must have an unpaid meal break of 30 mins within 5 hours while shift workers must have a meal break of 30 minutes that is to be counted as time worked.

Back to top

Employees working overtime on Saturday and Sunday must be allowed 20 minutes of paid crib time after 4 hours of work.

Back to top

In our experience, given the complexity of the award, many of our clients have opted to adopt Employment Hero's cloud payroll software as a solution to automate compliance and to help with labour cost control. Get in contact with us at Pay Cat if you’re interested in considering this option with the Building and Construction Award or any other modern award.

If you’re not ready yet, download our Ultimate Building and Construction Award Summary eBook and checklist which comprehensively covers everything you need to know including:

• Types of employment
• Inclement weather
• Travelling time entitlements
• Living away from home and distant work payments
• Industry allowances
• Hours of work
• Breaks
• Superannuation
• Overtime including time off instead
• Annual leave loading

Alternatively, if you're interested in making the move to Employment Hero Payroll, book in a free demo with us to find out how you can automate your Building and Construction General On-Site Award compliance with cloud payroll.