By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does health and safety catch bricklaying businesses out?
Most bricklaying businesses are built around getting brick and block up fast: mortar mixed, scaffold lifts climbed, labourers loading out, a builder chasing the next trade onto site. Health and safety duties can feel like paperwork sitting behind all of that, until a scaffold incident, a weather delay that rushes the next lift, or a silica dust exposure turns into something that stops the job and the business.
In New Zealand, WorkSafe is the government agency that is the work health and safety regulator, and the duties sit with the PCBU, the person conducting the business or undertaking, rather than with any one worker on site. According to WorkSafe's introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, a PCBU may be an individual person or an organisation, which means a bricklayer running the business alone carries the same duty as one with a full crew.
What are your duties as a bricklayer running the business?
As a bricklayer, you are usually the PCBU under New Zealand's Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA). That duty sits with you whether you run a one-person subcontract gang or a crew of labourers and apprentices, and it covers the brickwork, blockwork, footings and retaining walls you take on across every site.
Under HSWA, a PCBU has a primary duty of care to provide, so far as is reasonably practicable, a work environment without health and safety risks and adequate welfare facilities for workers, according to WorkSafe's guidance on general risk and workplace management. That duty runs through every stage of a job, from the footing and damp course work at ground level to the scaffold lifts as the wall rises and the cleaning down once the brickwork is handed back to the builder.
Where a risk cannot be removed, such as cutting face brick or mixing mortar, Appendix C: Health and Safety at Work Act duties says a PCBU must first try to eliminate the risk so far as is reasonably practicable, and where that is not possible, minimise it so far as is reasonably practicable. On a build where you are one of several subcontractors, the same page says a PCBU with overlapping duties must consult, cooperate and coordinate with the other PCBUs on site, including the builder managing the job and any other trades working alongside your crew. If you manage or control the site yourself, such as a retaining wall job run directly for a homeowner, the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 sets out a further duty to keep the workplace, and the ways in and out of it, safe.
What extra risks does WorkSafe flag for bricklayers specifically?
Two risks sit close to the centre of a bricklayer's day, and WorkSafe names both directly. The first is respirable crystalline silica, RCS dust, thrown up when brick, block, stone, mortar or fibre cement is cut, ground or dressed.
WorkSafe's guidance on silica dust lists construction work with concrete, stone, bricks, mortar and fibre cement products among the activities that expose workers to RCS dust, and says a PCBU has a duty to eliminate, or use controls to minimise, that exposure, with health monitoring required, so far as is reasonably practicable, for any worker who may be exposed.
The second is working at height, built into almost every day on a brickwork job once the wall climbs past the first lift of scaffold. WorkSafe's guidance on working at height sets out that workers themselves must take reasonable care of their own health and safety and that of others, follow reasonable instructions from the PCBU, and cooperate with the health and safety policies they have been told about. That sits alongside your own duty as the PCBU to manage the scaffold, the cavity work and the loading out safely as the wall goes up.
What can't you charge your crew for, and what should your own records show?
You cannot charge a labourer, apprentice or subcontractor on your crew for anything HSWA requires you to provide. WorkSafe's guidance on offences and penalties says a PCBU must not impose a levy on, or charge, workers for doing or providing anything the PCBU is required to do or provide, and gives PPE as the example: if a worker needs it, you provide it and you do not charge for it or require them to bring their own.
The record that actually tells you whether your bricklaying business meets these duties is not memory, it is what gets written down on the day: who was on site, what toolbox talk ran before the scaffold went up, which labourer was cutting brick and for how long, and whose exposure to RCS dust needs monitoring under WorkSafe's silica dust guidance linked above. Data first means those records live in the business as they happen, job by job and worker by worker, rather than being reconstructed from memory after an incident or a WorkSafe visit.
An AI agent, software that does a job the way you would, with your own wording and your own site rules, can be the one that captures the toolbox talk, logs who signed on and chases the missing form before the next lift starts, so the record exists because the job could not move past it, not because someone remembered to write it up later. AI agents built this way sit inside how your bricklaying business already runs, rather than asking the crew to learn a new system.
Do you need a Licensed Building Practitioner for bricklaying and blocklaying?
Bricklaying and blocklaying are named restricted building work, so the work must be designed or carried out by a Licensed Building Practitioner. Building.govt.nz's guidance on using licensed people for restricted building work, the New Zealand government's building information site, says you must use an LBP to design or carry out restricted building work, and names bricklaying and blocklaying among it.
Where your bricklaying business takes on load bearing walls, retaining walls tied into a structure, or other brickwork and blockwork that falls inside that definition, this licensing duty sits alongside, not instead of, your health and safety duties as PCBU. What counts as restricted building work on a particular job, and which bricklayers on your crew need to hold the licence, depends on the job itself, so check the current scope with Building.govt.nz or a qualified adviser rather than assuming every feature wall or retaining wall is covered the same way.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Introduction to HSWA: what the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 sets out to do and who WorkSafe is.
- Appendix C: HSWA duties: the PCBU's duty to eliminate or minimise risk and to work with other PCBUs on a shared site.
- Silica dust in the workplace: RCS dust exposure from cutting brick, block, stone and mortar, and the duty to monitor worker health.
- General risk and workplace management: the PCBU's primary duty of care and workplace facilities.
- Health and Safety at Work Act 2015: the full Act, including the duty of a PCBU who manages or controls a workplace.
- Working at height in New Zealand: duties for height work and what workers themselves must do.
- Offences and penalties under HSWA: what a PCBU cannot charge workers for.
- Use licensed people for restricted building work: when bricklaying and blocklaying need a Licensed Building Practitioner.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the records a bricklaying business already has, not from a checklist. Through the Trade Business Intelligence, Greg Allan looks at what the job data shows: who was rostered on each site, which jobs involved cutting brick or working above the first scaffold lift, and where a toolbox talk or a PPE issue was never logged, because that is usually where a compliance gap actually starts, not in the paperwork itself. AI agents can then be shaped to sit at that exact point in the job, in the business's own wording. The how of building that is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because it is for bricklayer owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share, and the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member.
