By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Which award covers my bricklaying crew?
For most bricklaying businesses in Australia, the award is the Building and Construction Award [MA000020], the national award the Fair Work Ombudsman lists as covering domestic and commercial building trades such as bricklayers, their labourers and their apprentices. If your crew works on-site laying brickwork, blockwork or retaining walls for a builder, this is almost certainly the award your business sits under.
The Fair Work Ombudsman's award summary for MA000020 also notes that the award extends to labour hire businesses and their employees placed with a building and construction business. That matters if part of your crew is subcontract labour brought in through an agency rather than employed directly.
Does the award cover my labourers and apprentices too?
Yes. The award is written to cover the whole crew around a bricklaying job, not just the tradesperson laying the brick. A labourer mixing mortar, loading out and working the scaffold alongside a qualified bricklayer, and an apprentice coming up through the trade, generally sit under the same award as the brickie they're working with.
The Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guidance for the award walks through how pay is set for a labourer starting work with a bricklaying company, which shows the coverage runs across the roles on a brickwork site, not only the licensed bricklayer. If the business is registered in Western Australia's state system rather than the national one, the WA guide to awards for common jobs points to a different award again, the Building Trades and Labourers (Construction) Award, for work done on-site, with a separate general award for work off-site. Which system a bricklaying business sits in depends on how it is structured, which is worth checking directly with the regulator.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
My award paperwork is sorted, so why did the quote come in thin?
A bricklaying business can have every classification right, award rates paid correctly and allowances sorted, and still watch a job that looked solid at quote stage come in thin by the time it's cleaned down and invoiced. The award tells a business what it must pay a bricklayer, a labourer or an apprentice. It says nothing about whether the rate per thousand bricks or the day rate charged to the builder was ever built to cover what that crew actually costs once mixing, loading out, scaffold time and weather days are counted.
When a crew is stretched, whether from a rush of jobs or someone being off site, the rest of the crew absorb the gap. That shows up as mistakes, rework and burnout long before it shows up on a profit and loss statement, and it's a real cost of the job, not just a staffing problem to work around. Getting pay wrong carries its own cost too: the Fair Work Ombudsman's case notes on underpayment in the building sector show what can follow when award rates for an apprentice or labourer aren't applied correctly, on top of whatever the rate itself was meant to cover.
What should I actually be watching beyond the award rate?
Once the award question is settled, the number worth watching every month is your gross profit margin on brickwork and blockwork jobs, not the per thousand rate or the day rate on its own. That margin tells you, job by job, whether the rate you quoted still covers the crew, the scaffold and the weather once the job is actually run, rather than how it looked on paper before the first lift went up.
Picture a bricklaying business that had been running every job with two qualified tradespeople on the tools, a costly way to staff work that doesn't need two trade rates on site. Restructuring the crew so one qualified bricklayer works alongside a second-year apprentice instead of a second qualified tradesperson changes the labour cost sitting under every quote, without changing what gets delivered to the builder on site. For a business moving past the stage of the owner being on every job personally, this is exactly the kind of crew decision that decides whether growth adds margin or just adds headaches.
This is where AI agents can take weight off a bricklaying business without touching the crew on site. An AI agent is software that does a piece of office work the way you'd do it yourself, using your prices, your wording and your rules, rather than a generic template built for every trade. Set up around your own job and pay data, an agent can hold your award classifications, your day rates and your rates per thousand bricks against what a job actually costs to run, so the rate gets tested against real jobs instead of being set once and left. That's the data first approach: starting from your own numbers, not from how the last few jobs felt.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Building and Construction Award MA000020, summary: the Fair Work Ombudsman's overview of who the award covers, including bricklayers, labourers and apprentices.
- Pay under the Building and Construction Award: the Fair Work Ombudsman's explanation of how pay is worked out under the award.
- Allowances in the Building and Construction Award: the allowances the award provides for, explained by the Fair Work Ombudsman.
- WA awards for common jobs: the Western Australian government's guide to which award applies to a bricklayer in the state system.
- Building Trades and Labourers (General) Award summary: detail on the state award and when to check with the Fair Work Ombudsman instead.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching doesn't start with award classifications, because that's a Fair Work question, not a coaching one. It starts with your own job and pay data inside the Trade Business Intelligence, looking at what each brickwork or blockwork job actually cost once labour, scaffold time and weather days are counted against what was quoted. Greg Allan teaches that when a crew is stretched, “the team will feel it. So they will start to feel burnout”, and that cost belongs in the numbers, not just on site. The how, including how to test and rebuild a rate so it holds, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins it.
