By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
What counts as a health and safety duty for someone running a fencing business?
A fencing business owner is a PCBU, a person conducting a business or undertaking, under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. The guide to the Act explains that a PCBU can be a company or a natural person, including a sole trader or self-employed fencer working alone, and the primary duty of care applies either way: so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers and anyone else affected by the work must not be put at risk.
That duty follows the fencer onto every site, whether it is a boundary fence between two houses, a pool fence install next to a half finished pool, or a rural fencing run across someone's paddock. According to PCBUs working together, a PCBU is also treated as a worker if they personally carry out the work, so a sole operator running their own auger and loading their own trailer carries both roles at once.
What happens if a fencer treats safety as paperwork instead of protecting the crew?
Filling in a form after the fact is not the same as stopping someone getting hurt. A missed post hole left unfenced, an unsecured load of steel posts on the trailer, or a rushed footing near a line can be a legal breach and a human cost that no paperwork undoes afterwards.
Most of what happens in a fencing business can be dropped and picked back up: a quote that goes out a day late, an invoice that waits, a job pushed to next week. A crew member's safety is not one of those things. The small to medium business guide sets out what the primary duty requires: a safe work environment, safe plant and systems of work, proper handling and storage, welfare facilities, and enough training and supervision that the crew actually knows what to do.
The pressure point is usually a heavy workload. A fencer racing to finish a long rural run before the weather turns, or trying to close out a boundary job before the next one starts, is exactly the point where shortcuts start to look reasonable. That is a choice made under pressure, not something that just happens, and managing critical risks for small PCBUs says officers of small PCBUs must exercise due diligence to make sure those risks are actually being managed, not just logged.
What do you actually have to do to meet your primary duty of care?
As a PCBU, your job is to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that your crew and anyone else affected by the work are not put at risk. For a fencing business that covers the auger, the trailer, the steel posts and panels you load and unload, and how a post hole is fenced off or backfilled before the job moves on.
The Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016, explained on WorkSafe's farm safety page, put a duty on the PCBU to provide personal protective equipment, and a duty on workers to wear or use it. That duty sits with you even on days you are back at the yard sorting materials for the next install, because the officer duty of due diligence does not pause when you are off site.
None of this has to run on memory. The number that actually tells you whether your crew is being protected is not a feeling, it is what gets recorded on site: who did a toolbox talk before the rural run, which post holes were fenced off and when, what PPE was issued and worn. Keeping that from your own job data, rather than reconstructing it weeks later, is what Greg calls data first. AI agents, software that does a job the way you would, with your own wording and your own site rules, can carry that record keeping for you, logging the toolbox talk and flagging a post hole that has not been backfilled, without pulling you off the tools to do it.
What are your duties when you're digging post holes or working near power lines?
Before the auger goes in, the PCBU has to identify and manage hazards from underground and overhead services at the planning stage. WorkSafe's excavation safety guide says crews should treat a service as present until it is proven otherwise, not the other way round.
Near overhead lines, a minimum safe approach distance applies under the New Zealand Electrical Code of Practice, and where a fence line genuinely cannot avoid working near a line, power lines on rural properties points fencers to the electric fence standard AS/NZS 3014 for how to manage that installation safely. A boundary job in a built up street usually means checking for pipes and cables under the post hole, while a rural fencing run across a paddock is just as likely to put a steel post near an overhead line. Either way, the duty sits with you before the first footing goes in.
What happens when another PCBU is on site too?
Fencing work rarely happens on its own. A pool fence install can run alongside a landscaper and a pool builder, a boundary fence sits between two neighbours each party to their own dividing fence arrangement, and a rural job can put a fencer on a farm where the farmer is also a PCBU.
Working at height in New Zealand is clear that a PCBU cannot contract out its duties. Reasonable arrangements can be made with other PCBUs, but that does not mean your business no longer carries any responsibility, you still have to check that what was agreed is actually being followed through. Where duties overlap, health and safety on farms explains that the PCBUs involved must consult, cooperate and coordinate with each other.
For a fencer that can mean checking what a landscaper has already fenced off around a pool excavation before your crew sets up the trailer and starts unloading panels. AI agents set up for a fencing business can hold that check as a step before a job starts, in the same way they hold your pricing and quote wording, so whether a post hole has been fenced off does not rely on someone remembering correctly days later.
Where can you check the current rules?
- PCBUs working together: advice when contracting covers the primary duty of care and overlapping PCBU duties.
- A guide to New Zealand's key work health and safety law covers who counts as a PCBU, including sole traders and the self-employed.
- Health and safety leadership guide for owners and directors covers what the primary duty of care requires in practice.
- Managing critical risks for small PCBUs covers the officer duty of due diligence for small businesses.
- Working at height in New Zealand covers overlapping duties between PCBUs and worker duties.
- Health and safety on farms - your questions covers PPE duties and working alongside farmers as PCBUs on rural jobs.
- Good practice guidelines: excavation safety covers duties around underground and overhead services.
- Power lines on rural properties covers the safe distance from overhead lines and the electric fence standard.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from what is actually happening on your sites, not from a generic checklist. Through the Trade Business Intelligence, Greg Allan looks at the records a fencing business already holds, toolbox talks, near misses, who was on which job, to find where a safety gap actually starts, whether that is a pricing structure pushing crews to rush a rural run or a handover that leaves a post hole unfenced overnight. Greg puts it simply: “let's protect your team.” The how, the systems that carry that record keeping without pulling you off the tools, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
