Short version: the Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 (MA000020) runs on a 38-hour week averaged over a four-week cycle with rostered days off, sets a 25% casual loading and a four-hour casual minimum, and layers trade- and site-specific allowances on top of each classification rate. Most underpayments come from getting the classification wrong, losing track of RDOs, missing an allowance, or paying from rounded hours. Your payroll system applies the award; what you can control is getting the classification and the hours right before they reach it.
Who the award covers
The award covers employers throughout Australia in the on-site building, engineering and civil construction industry, and their employees in the classifications it defines. That industry means general building and construction, civil construction, and metal and engineering construction, in each case done on site. It also covers labour hire businesses that on-hire employees into that industry, for the time those employees work for a business in it.
Two checks come before anything else. First, confirm the work really is on-site construction under the award’s definitions rather than work covered by another award. Second, check whether an enterprise agreement applies: where one covers the employee, the award generally does not, although the agreement’s base pay cannot fall below the award’s and the National Employment Standards still apply.
Classifications
Pay is set by classification level — levels 1 to 8 for construction workers in general building and civil construction (CW 1–8), and 1 to 9 for engineering construction workers in metal and engineering construction (ECW 1–9), each with a minimum weekly and hourly rate. The award’s schedule of classification definitions decides the level from the work performed, skills and qualifications. Every rate and many allowances flow from that level, so a worker classified too low is underpaid however carefully everything else is calculated. Revisit the classification when a worker’s duties or qualifications change, not just at onboarding.
Ordinary hours and rostered days off
This is where the award differs most from other industries. Outside shiftwork, ordinary hours are 38 a week, averaged over a 20-day, four-week cycle so that rostered days off (RDOs) can accrue, and worked between 7.00 am and 6.00 pm, Monday to Friday.
- Each ordinary day is 8 hours: 7.6 hours are paid and 0.4 of an hour accrues towards an RDO. That builds 7.6 hours — one RDO — every 19 days of ordinary hours worked.
- The 0.4-hour accrual also applies on public holidays an employee is not required to work and on days of paid leave, but not on an RDO itself.
- RDOs are taken under a written roster the employer fixes and issues 7 days before the cycle starts, and the award sets rules for banking RDOs by agreement and for working on an RDO.
RDO errors rarely come from misunderstanding the rule. They come from tracking it inconsistently — a worker who moves between projects mid-cycle, or who still has accrued RDOs when a job wraps up.
Casual employees
- Casual loading: 25% on top of the ordinary hourly rate for ordinary hours.
- Minimum engagement: payment for at least 4 hours per engagement, plus the relevant fares and travel allowance and the expenses the award sets for distant work and travelling time.
- Overtime and weekend work: casuals get the overtime and penalty rates with their own uplift — for example, where the penalty rate is 150%, a casual is paid 175% of the ordinary hourly rate. The loading is not simply dropped when a penalty applies.
Overtime
Time worked beyond ordinary hours on Monday to Friday is paid at 150% of the ordinary hourly rate for the first 2 hours and 200% after that — and “ordinary hours” here include the time worked towards RDO accrual. Weekend and public holiday work have their own rates and minimums; for example, an employee required to work overtime on a Saturday must get at least 3 hours’ work or be paid for 3 hours. The trigger matters as much as the rate: overtime starts where ordinary hours end, so the start and finish times you record decide what the payroll should pay.
Allowances
This is one of the more allowance-heavy awards, and which allowances apply depends on the trade, the site and the work on the day. Among them:
- Industry allowance — an all-purpose allowance that forms part of the ordinary hourly rate, with a separate civil construction version.
- Tool allowance — a weekly amount for specified trades, such as carpenters and joiners, bricklayers, plasterers and tilelayers.
- Multistorey allowance — for work on multistorey buildings, including tall structures without regular storey levels.
- Leading hand amounts — for employees required to supervise, direct or be in charge of others.
- Fares and travel pattern allowance, travelling between construction sites, and living away from home — distant work.
- Other allowances such as underground, first aid, electrician’s licence, meal and lift industry allowances.
Allowance amounts change too. Wage-related allowances move with minimum wages each year, and expense-related allowances are adjusted for inflation, so a figure that was right last July may not be right now. Use the current award or Fair Work pay guide rather than last year’s spreadsheet.
What changed on 1 July 2026
The Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review 2026 increased minimum award wages from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026, and this award’s rates and allowances were updated from that date. On the same day, superannuation moved to Payday Super.
Superannuation
From 1 July 2026, the super guarantee is 12% of an employee’s qualifying earnings and is paid for each payday, reaching the fund within 7 business days (with some exceptions, such as for new employees). Before 1 July 2026 the same 12% applied to ordinary time earnings, paid quarterly. Qualifying earnings bring together ordinary time earnings, commissions, certain salary-sacrifice amounts and other amounts that already counted for super, and the ATO says what counts as ordinary time earnings has not changed: casual loading and shift penalties count, but overtime does not where the award clearly identifies ordinary hours. Whether a particular allowance counts depends on the allowance — check the ATO’s list before setting up pay codes. For the labour hire angle, see Payday Super for labour hire agencies.
Records
Employers must keep time and wages records for 7 years — including any loadings, penalty rates and allowances paid — and give each employee a pay slip within one working day of payday. In a dispute or an audit, the timesheet behind each pay is usually the first thing asked for.
Where payroll most often goes wrong
- Classification set once and never revisited as a worker gains skills, tickets or responsibility.
- RDO accrual tracked loosely, especially when a worker moves between projects mid-cycle.
- Casual minimums ignored — a two-hour job paid as two hours when the award requires four.
- Allowances missed or out of date, because nobody flagged that the job triggered one, or last year’s amount was carried over.
- Hours captured loosely — a rounded start or an assumed finish, which moves the point where overtime begins.
Where OnCrew fits, and where it does not
OnCrew does not interpret the award. It does not decide which award applies, classify workers, calculate rates, overtime, casual loadings, penalties or allowances, track RDO accrual, run payroll or pay super. That belongs in your payroll system and with the people who run it.
What OnCrew handles is the record that payroll starts from:
- Shifts and actual times. Workers clock in and out from their phone. Each clock-in is location-checked against the site — one from outside the boundary is recorded and flagged for review rather than blocked — and clock-out is time-stamped but not location-checked. The clock times are stored as they happened, not rounded.
- Hours, as you configure them. By default, hours are the time between clock-in and clock-out, less the unpaid break your agency sets. Sites can instead be set to pay the rostered shift, and agencies on weekly timesheets have workers enter their own hours — so check your setup matches how you intend to pay.
- Supervisor approval. Supervisors approve hours from their phone before anything is exported.
- Exports of approved hours. The Employment Hero-format export carries each shift’s date, start and finish times, break, hours, work type and client. OnCrew also exports for MYOB AccountRight and, through the UpSheets bridge, for Xero — that file carries hours and work type rather than start and finish times.
Your payroll system then applies the award to those approved hours. OnCrew makes the input more reliable; it does not make the payroll compliant on its own. More on construction labour hire software and clock-in and timesheets.
Official sources checked for this guide (October 2026): Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 (consolidated to 1 July 2026) · Fair Work Ombudsman — MA000020 summary · Fair Work Ombudsman — Pay and Conditions Tool · Fair Work Ombudsman — about awards · Fair Work Ombudsman — Annual Wage Review 2026 · Fair Work Ombudsman — record-keeping · ATO — about Payday Super · ATO — what payments are qualifying earnings
