How Long Can You Hire Scaffolding in Canberra?

There is no official answer

People often expect a rule: a standard number of weeks, a legal maximum, a fixed minimum. We looked for one and did not find it. The pages that set the rules for scaffolding in the ACT, from WorkSafe ACT and Safe Work Australia, deal with who may erect a scaffold, what it must have on it, and how often it must be checked. None of them says how long a scaffold may stand on a site or how long it may be hired for. The length of a hire is a commercial term between you and the scaffolder, and it is written into the quote or the hire agreement.

That is why this page does not give you a typical number of weeks. Any figure we printed would be a guess about somebody else's contract, and a guess is exactly what leads to a surprise bill in week five. What we can do is tell you how the terms are usually put together, which questions pin them down, and which parts of the Canberra year tend to stretch a job.

How hire terms are usually built

In practice most scaffolders quote in three parts, though the names and the way they are combined differ from one business to the next. The scaffolder decides how to present them, so read the quote with these parts in mind.

• Erect and dismantle. The labour to put the scaffold up and take it down again, often priced as one item. This may not change with how long the scaffold stands, unless the job needs it to be moved or altered part way through.
• A base hire period. A block of time included in the quote, after which the meter starts running. The length of the block is a contractor decision. Some set a minimum term, some include a set number of weeks, and some bill weekly from the start.
• A weekly extension rate. What you pay for each extra week after the base period ends. The form it takes differs between contractors, so ask.

We found no official source that sets any of these. Ask the scaffolder for each one in writing. If a quote shows only a single total with no mention of a base period, ask what the total covers and what happens in the week after it ends. The cost guide covers what else should be itemised, and the hire page explains what a weekly hire includes.

When the clock starts and stops

Two jobs of the same size can end up with different hire periods only because the clock started and stopped at different moments. This is worth settling before the scaffold goes up, because it is easy to argue about afterwards.

Ask when the hire period begins. It might begin when the materials are delivered, when erection starts, or when the scaffold is handed over for use. Ask when it ends. It might end when you tell the scaffolder you are finished, when the dismantle is booked, or when the last component leaves the site. Disagreements can arise in the gap between the day the builder stops using the scaffold and the day the crew can actually come back to take it down. If the scaffolder is booked out for two weeks, you do not want to pay for those two weeks without having agreed that you would.

Ask how long the scaffolder needs for notice to dismantle, and ask whether wet days, public holidays and weekends count. A written answer to those four questions removes most of the uncertainty. If the scaffold is for a trade rather than the home owner, such as a roofer or a painter, work out who is giving the call to dismantle. A scaffold that nobody is allowed to release will stay up, and keep costing money, until somebody decides it can come down.

Frost and short winter days

Canberra is cold in winter, and the cold changes how long a job takes. The Bureau of Meteorology's Canberra Airport averages for 2008 to 2026 give a mean maximum of 12.9 degrees Celsius and a mean minimum of 0.1 degrees in July, against a mean maximum of 30.0 degrees in January. The BoM and CSIRO ACT climate guide says winter frosts have become somewhat less common than in the past, with about five fewer potential frost nights than in the 1959 to 1988 period, and that the risk of frost has typically ended by the last week of October. It also notes that dry winters and springs bring more frosty nights.

What that means for a hire is practical rather than technical. Frost and short winter days are named by one published cost guide as things that slow work, and a slower job means the scaffold stays standing longer. The cost guide for this site lists frost and short winter days among the things that move a price, and hire length is the route by which they do so.

Questions to put to the scaffolder

You do not need to know the answer to any of these yourself. You need the scaffolder to give you one, in writing, before you sign.

A long hire still has to be inspected

The longer a scaffold stands, the more often it has to be checked. WorkSafe ACT's scaffolding alerts, including the one on falls from height, say a scaffold should be inspected before first use, after an event that could affect its stability such as a severe storm, after repairs, and at intervals not exceeding 30 days, by a competent person. The WorkSafe ACT page on staying safe on scaffold lists, among the problems found, a scaffold tag that has not been inspected within a 30 day timeframe and no tag in place at all.

For your hire this means that a job running past a month has a scheduled inspection in the middle of it, and a hire running for several months has several. That is a reason to ask who carries out those inspections, whether they are included in the weekly rate and what happens if one finds a fault. The inspections and handover guide covers the tag, the 30 day interval and what to ask to see.

Planning so the job does not run over

You cannot remove the risk of a slow week, but you can reduce it. Agree the order of trades before the scaffold goes up, so that the roofer, the painter and the gutter crew are not waiting on each other. Confirm the dates with the people who will be on the scaffold and ask them how many working days each needs, not how many calendar days. Allow a buffer in the booking if the job runs through the cold months, and ask whether the scaffolder prefers you to hold the dismantle date loosely or book it firmly.

Think too about the other things that could delay the job and so extend the hire: approval for a scaffold on a nature strip, which in the ACT is likely to be handled by the Public Land Use Team and needs lead time (the footpath and nature strip guide has the details), or work near overhead power lines, which can need Evoenergy involvement before anyone starts. If those are unresolved when the scaffold is ready, you can end up paying to hold a scaffold you cannot yet use. It helps to know the type of scaffold too, because a bigger or more specialised structure takes longer to put up and take down; the types guide explains the main kinds. If you are hiring for a house, the residential page sets out how a typical house job is sequenced.

Last, keep a note of the dates on which the scaffold was handed over, inspected and dismantled. If an invoice later disagrees with your recollection, a dated record settles it quickly. A photo of the tag on handover, and another when the scaffold comes down, costs nothing.