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Which award covers the staff of a surveying business in Australia?

The Surveying Award (MA000066) covers the employees of a surveying business in Australia, including field crew, drafting staff, graduate surveyors and licensed or registered surveyors, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman. Staff whose role does not fit its classifications can fall under the Miscellaneous Award instead. Knowing the award is only the starting point: the real risk for a survey business is whether that wage cost gets booked against the right job.

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By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching

Which award covers the staff of a surveying business in Australia?

The Surveying Award (MA000066) covers employers who employ professional surveyors and other staff who fit its classifications, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman's summary page for the Surveying Award. That means your field crew out doing boundary surveys, detail surveys, subdivisions and set outs for builders, your drafting staff turning measurement data into a plan and report, and your graduate surveyors working toward registration can all sit under this one award, alongside licensed or registered surveyors.

The award is occupational rather than industry based. According to the full text of the Surveying Award 2020, it covers employers throughout Australia who employ professional surveyors and employees in its listed classifications, to the exclusion of any other modern award, and it also extends to labour hire businesses placing professional surveyors with your business. Where registration under state or federal law is required for particular types of surveying work, such as cadastral, mining or hydrographic surveying, that registration is mandatory at the relevant level unless another registered surveyor takes responsibility for the work.

This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.

What about staff whose role doesn't fit the Surveying Award?

If a role in your survey business doesn't fit any classification in the Surveying Award, it can still be covered, just under a different award, rather than being left uncovered altogether. The Fair Work Ombudsman's summary of the Miscellaneous Award sets out that it covers employers and employees who fit its classifications and are not covered by any other modern award.

That can apply to office based staff in a survey business, such as reception, bookkeeping or business development, who aren't doing field or drafting work themselves. Which award fits which person depends on their actual duties on any given day, not their job title, so this is one to check against your own situation rather than assume.

Why does knowing the award only solve half the problem?

Getting the award right protects a survey business legally, and it is worth getting settled early. But it does not, on its own, tell the owner whether the wage paid under that award is actually landing against the right job on the books, which is a separate and arguably bigger problem.

A survey business runs on two kinds of labour: field crew paid by the hour for boundary surveys, set outs, contour and as-built work, and drafting time turning raw GPS or drone measurement data into a plan and report. If those hours are not fully counted as the direct cost of the subdivision, the detail survey or the set out they belong to, the quoted margin on that job looks healthy on paper while overhead quietly absorbs the real cost.

Greg teaches that in busy stretches, pushing a field crew harder without adjusting pricing or billable days can erode the very margin a job was quoted to make, through fatigue, rework and mistakes on site. In quiet stretches the same crew sits on cost without matching billable work. Either way, if the owner is guessing at labour cost rather than seeing it job by job, financial stress and staff stress start to feed each other.

What does this look like on the ground for a survey business?

Picture a survey business that had been running with two licensed surveyors out on every boundary job, which was a costly way to staff straightforward set outs and detail surveys that didn't need two qualified people on site every time. The council deadlines kept getting met, the developer and builder clients kept getting their plans on time, and the jobs still looked fine at quoting stage.

What changed was the owner restructured the crew so one licensed surveyor now works alongside a graduate surveyor instead of a second licensed surveyor, with the graduate building toward registration under supervision. The work still gets measured, checked and reported the same way. But the labour cost sitting against each job changes, and that only becomes visible once the owner is looking at cost by job rather than at the award rate in isolation.

How can AI agents help a survey business get the cost booking right?

You can use AI agents, software that does a job the way you would, with your prices, wording and rules, to carry the paperwork of matching field crew hours and drafting time to the job they belong to, rather than leaving it to whoever remembers at invoice time. That is a data first way of running the business: the booking starts from your own job and pay data, not from memory at the end of the month.

AI agents working on timesheets and job costing can hold your crew to the same booking rule on every boundary survey, subdivision and set out, so the gross profit margin on each job, and across the business each month, is a number you actually know rather than one you hope for. Greg's approach to systemising a survey business is to test and measure whatever gets introduced, rather than assume the booking method already in place is working, because the only way to know is to look at what the data shows once it is captured the same way every time.

Where can you check the current rules?

How does Data First Coaching approach this?

Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts from a survey business's own job and pay data through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a conversation about the award or a general industry rule. It looks at what each boundary survey, subdivision or set out actually cost in field and drafting hours against what it was quoted to make, because that is where the real margin problem usually starts, not in the award classification itself. Left unclear, this is exactly the situation where “there's financial stress, there's client stress, there's staff stress”, each one feeding the next for the owner carrying it. The how of setting this up is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member, and the Academy is built for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn with each other.

Also asked

More questions owners ask.

Does the Surveying Award cover graduate surveyors and trainees?

Yes, the Fair Work Ombudsman's summary of the Surveying Award lists graduate surveyors among the employees it covers, alongside survey technicians, survey assistants and licensed or registered surveyors. Which classification applies depends on the duties the person actually performs, so check the award's classification structure against the role rather than the title.

Does the award apply differently across states and territories?

The Surveying Award itself is an occupational award covering employers throughout Australia, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman. Registration requirements for cadastral, mining or hydrographic surveying work sit with state and federal legislation separately, so check the relevant state regulator for licensing rules in your location.

What if a survey business uses subcontractors or labour hire for field crew?

The Fair Work Ombudsman notes that the Surveying Award also covers labour hire businesses and their employees where those employees are professional surveyors placed with another organisation. Whether a particular subcontracting arrangement is covered depends on the actual working relationship, so this is worth checking for your own setup.

Is the business owner themselves covered by the award?

Modern awards generally cover employees, not business owners operating as sole traders or company directors doing their own fieldwork. Whether a working owner in a survey business is covered depends on how the business is structured, so this is one to confirm against your own situation rather than assume.

Data First Coaching

Coaching That Starts From Your Data.

Data First Coaching is the trade business coaching method created by Greg Allan, founder of Tradies Success Academy. Before any advice is given, the Trade Business Intelligence Agent reads the owner's own job management and finance data, so the coaching starts from what the numbers show this week, not from what the owner can remember or explain. It finds the root cause of a problem, then puts in the system that fixes it.

How most coaching works

Most coaching starts with the owner explaining the business.

  • The first hours go on the owner describing the business to a coach.
  • The picture is out of date within weeks, because the numbers move every week.
  • So the advice treats what the owner happened to notice, which is usually a symptom.
  • Too often it comes from someone who has never run a trade business, or has only just started one.
  • The owner pays for the explaining, then pays again when the advice does not fit.

Data First Coaching

Data first starts from your numbers, not your memory.

  • The Trade Business Intelligence Agent reads your job management and finance systems first.
  • It sees your quotes, jobs, time on site and money as they are this week, not as you remember them.
  • It finds where the problem actually starts, not where it shows up.
  • You put in the system that fixes it at the root, and the data shows whether it worked.
Typical coaching against Data First Coaching
Typical coachingData First Coaching
Where it startsYou explain the businessYour own job and finance data
How current it isAs at the last meetingUpdated as your numbers change each week
What it fixesThe symptom you noticedThe root cause the data shows
Who coaches youOften someone who has never run a trade businessGreg Allan, who built a trade business a general manager now runs
The answer to growthUsually another wageAgents on the office work, people on customers and the crew
Your softwareAnother subscription or agencyTools you build on your own data, around how you work

Fix the root cause, once

The data names the real problem, so the system you put in fixes it once instead of patching the same symptom every month.

Own your software

Build your own tools on your own data, shaped around how your jobs run and how your customers buy. Cancel the subscriptions and agencies that were never built for your business.

A more human business

Agents do the non-billable work: the quoting, invoicing, chasing and reporting. Your people spend the day on customers and the crew, so relationships get better and the team performs.

How Data First Coaching works

Why Greg

You speak to the owner who has already done it.

Greg built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with 1,950+ five-star reviews. A general manager runs it.

He has trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.

He grew a coaching company to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches, then cut it back so every owner deals with him directly.

Most coaching companies hand you to a salesperson, then to a coach who has never run a trade business. Here you get the owner.

The Academy is full because it works, and Greg keeps it small on purpose so every business gets looked at properly, by him. He reads every application himself, interviews the owners who fit and only takes on owners who are building for the right reasons and give back to the group. Join the waitlist and he'll be in touch when a place opens.

Illustration: a trade business owner standing over three office staff buried in paperwork at night.
The old way

More customers meant more people doing the computer work, and more wages nobody invoices.

Illustration: a tradesman shaking hands with a homeowner in her driveway, his phone showing jobs quoted and invoiced.
The new way

You stay with your customers and your team. The office stops landing on you.

The old way

More jobs. More paperwork. Less of the owner left.

Most trade businesses grow the same way.

More jobs means more quoting, invoicing, chasing and scheduling.

None of it gets paid for.

So the owner does it at night, after a full day on site.

Or hires an office person to do it.

The office grows. The wages grow. The margin does not.

And the owner is still the one everything waits on.

Where we take you

More work. More profit. More of you left.

The phone rings with the jobs you want, at the price you set.

You grow when you're ready, never faster than the business can carry.

Every job is priced to make money, so the busy months show up in the bank.

The best tradies in your area want to work for you, and they stay.

The chasing, the paperwork and the 9pm admin stop landing on you.

The business runs the day. You pick which parts of it you're in.

Bigger, without the headaches. Getting bigger stops meaning getting busier.

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P.S.

P.S. Joining the waitlist costs nothing and there is no obligation. While you wait, the Tradies App is free for trade business owners, so you can start on the lessons tonight.