SWMS templates are one of those things that get downloaded once, customised badly, then sit in a folder nobody opens. We’ve seen enough of them now that we’ve narrowed down the 5 that cover the bulk of trade work in Australia.
1. Working at heights
The big one. Anything over 2 metres needs documentation. Covers ladders, scaffolding, harnesses, edge protection, exclusion zones. If you do roofing, gutter work, or commercial fit-out you’re using this regularly.
2. Electrical work
Live work, isolation, lockout-tagout, testing and tagging. Covers both residential rewires and commercial switchboard work. The most prosecuted area for non-compliance, so worth getting right.
3. Hot work
Welding, grinding, oxyacetylene cutting. Includes the 30-minute fire watch and the permit-to-work flow if you’re on a managed site. Often overlooked by smaller fabrication shops.
4. Confined spaces
Tank entry, pit work, anything where ventilation matters. Includes atmospheric testing, attendant requirements, rescue plans. Required for most water utility and council subcontract work.
5. Excavation and trenching
Anything over 1.5 metres deep. Covers shoring, dial-before-you-dig, exclusion zones, soil testing. Common gap for landscapers expanding into civil work.
A practical note
The mistake we see most often is using a SWMS that’s been customised once for one job and never updated. The point of a SWMS is that it reflects the specific work, the specific site, and the people doing the work. 5 minutes of customisation at the start of a job is the entire value of the document.
In Trak, every SWMS gets duplicated against the job and edited there so you’ve got an audit trail of what was actually agreed for that job.