Site Allowances and Loadings in Construction

What it is

The Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 (MA000020) carries more allowances than almost any other modern award. A residential carpenter can be owed a minimum rate, an industry allowance, a tool allowance, a fares and travel allowance and a first aid allowance in the same week.

The distinction that costs builders money is not whether an allowance is payable. It is whether it is paid for all purposes. Clause 2 defines the term: the payment "will be included in the rate of pay of an employee who is entitled to the allowance, when calculating any penalties or loadings or payment while they are on annual leave". An all purpose allowance is part of the ordinary hourly rate. Miss it and you underpay overtime, penalty rates, annual leave, the 17.5 per cent leave loading and the super guarantee on every hour worked.

All figures below applied from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, after the Annual Wage Review 2026 lifted award minimum wage rates by 4.75 per cent.

The all purpose allowances

The award uses the words "for all purposes" in only a handful of places:

• Industry allowance (clause 22): $67.15 per week for general building, civil and metal and engineering construction; $53.72 per week for residential. Clause 22.3 makes it all purpose.
• Tool allowance (clause 21.1(a)): $41.22 a week for a carpenter or joiner, $34.10 for a plasterer, $29.26 for a bricklayer, down to $9.89 for a painter, signwriter or glazier.
• Underground allowance (clause 23.2(a)): $20.14 per week.
• Electrician's licence allowance (clause 23.8(a)): $35.81 per week.
• Carpenter-diver allowance (clause 23.5): $1.33 per hour.

Leading hands get a percentage of the weekly rate of the highest classification supervised, or their own rate if higher: 2.4 per cent for one person, 5.3 for 2 to 5, 6.7 for 6 to 10 and 9.0 for more than 10. Clause 19.2(b) applies it for all purposes for daily hire employees.

Clause 22.1(b) keeps the residential industry allowance below the general rate, and clause 22.2(b) confines it to single or dual occupancy residential buildings that are not multistorey. Townhouses of five or more storey levels attract the general rate.

The allowances that are not all purpose

These are payable on top of the rate but do not flow into penalties, loadings or leave:

• Multistorey allowance (clause 23.3): $0.77 per hour to the 15th floor level, rising by bands to $2.24 from the 61st. It compensates for disabilities peculiar to multistorey work.
• First aid allowance (clause 23.6): $4.03 per day on the minimum qualification, $6.38 on a higher one.
• Meal allowance (clause 21.2): $19.74 per meal after at least one and a half hours of overtime.
• Fares and travel pattern allowance (clause 26.1(a)): $22.41 per day worked, removed by clause 26.1(b) where the employer provides or offers free transport from home to site.
• Living away from home (clause 25.3(a)(i)): the greater of $102.92 per day or full reimbursement of reasonable accommodation and meal costs.
• Computing quantities at $6.86 per day, and the scaffolding or rigging certificate allowance at $0.94 per hour (clause 23.10).

Clause 23.10(a)(ii) keeps the special rates out of overtime: they "must be paid irrespective of the times at which work is performed and will not, except where specified, be subject to any premium or penalty conditions".

Watch the two that sit between the lists. The tool allowance is filed under Expense-related allowances yet is expressly all purpose, while the air-conditioning allowance of $88.41 a week and the in charge of plant allowance of $52.60 a week fold into the weekly hire hourly rate under clause 19.3(b) without being all purpose. The heading is not the test. The words are.

What is not in this award any more

Payroll staff still ask about dirty work money, wet work money, confined space and height money. Those special rates are not in the current MA000020. They sat in the pre-2020 award and did not survive the restructure. Clause 23.10, the surviving special rates clause, now holds only computing quantities and the scaffolding or rigging certificate allowance. If your enterprise agreement pays dirt money, that is the agreement doing it, not the award.

What it costs to get wrong

Treating the industry allowance as a flat add-on rather than part of the ordinary hourly rate is the most common construction payroll error there is. On the residential rate it is worth about $1.41 an hour across 38 hours, so every overtime hour at time and a half is short about 71 cents, every annual leave hour is short $1.41 plus the 17.5 per cent loading on top, and the 12 per cent super guarantee is short on all of it. Across a crew, over the six year recovery period, that is a five figure back-payment before penalties.

Rebuild the ordinary hourly rate from clause 19.3 rather than from the classification table. That one step catches most of it.