Free construction calculators, checkers and practical site tools for Australian builders, supervisors and construction teams. Run the site from your phone — no app, no logins, no credit card. View all 75 free tools and guides → These tools run in your browser, save on your device, and print real QR signs for the wall. Built by builders on the Gold Coast — use them, flog them to your mates, and when you want the full operating system behind them, it's one click away.
Set it once here and every tool below prints with your logo and company name on top - inductions, pre-starts, permits, registers, signs, the lot. Stored on your device, never uploaded.
Tick your job against the 18 high risk construction work categories and get a straight answer, with the Act and regulator for your state. The question every builder asks, answered in 30 seconds.
Check my job → ⚡How close can the crane, excavator or EWP get to that overhead line? Voltage in, minimum approach distance out, plus the spotter rule and what to do if plant does make contact.
Open the tool → 🚧Depth, ground and water in - shoring, benching or battering out. Flags the 1.5 m high-risk trigger, confined space, and the surcharge that turns a stable face into a collapse.
Open the tool → 🧗A harness is near the bottom of the hierarchy, not the top. Height and task in, the control the law actually expects out - worked down all five levels.
Open the tool → 💨Cutting, grinding or drilling? Material and tool in, the controls actually expected out - plus the respirator that works, and when air and health monitoring are triggered. Silicosis is irreversible.
Open the tool → 🔈Add the noisy tasks in a shift and see the eight-hour dose against the 85 dB(A) standard. Every 3 dB halves the time you can be exposed - most people are surprised how fast it adds up.
Open the tool → 🏥How many first aiders, how many kits, and do you need a first aid room? Crew size, risk and remoteness in, with the reasoning shown so you can defend the number.
Open the tool → 🔍Search the 300 Australia-wide SWMS activities, tick what is happening on your job, and get the list of SWMS you need with document numbers - the sheet you hand your subbies.
Open the tool → ✅Most rejected SWMS fail on the same handful of things, and none of them are the hazard list. Sixteen checks on what a SWMS has to contain — and which bits yours is missing.
Open the tool → 📜Permits get missed because nobody realises the task needs one. Tick what is happening on site today and see what should have a permit behind it, before the crew starts.
Open the tool → 🔒Isolation goes wrong in predictable ways — a second energy source, stored energy nobody dissipated, or a lock that went on without anyone proving it dead. Fourteen checks in sequence.
Open the tool → 🚨Every site has an evacuation plan. Far fewer have a rescue plan for their own high risk work. Fifteen checks including the rescue procedures most plans leave out.
Open the tool → 📈Spend against budget tells you nothing on its own. Put it next to physical completion and you get the rate you have really been building at — and where the job actually finishes.
Open the tool → 🚚Order too few trucks and the pour stops. Too many and they queue going off. Cycle time, the number you need, the duration, and which end is really the bottleneck.
Open the tool → 💵Profitable builders go under on cash, not margin. Costs leave weekly, money comes back monthly and thirty days late, minus retention. This shows how deep the hole gets and how much you need behind the job to survive it.
Open the tool → 🔍Half the closed items on a defect list are not closed — they are fixed, unphotographed and unverified, and they all come back at handover. Fourteen checks on whether this one survives re-inspection.
Open the tool → ⏳Every late job spent months insisting it would recover. The honest test is arithmetic: the rate you have built at against the rate the rest now needs — and whether that lift is reachable at all.
Open the tool → 🏗Crane incidents are rarely a surprise. A weight nobody confirmed, a sling angle nobody checked, ground nobody tested. Nineteen pre-lift checks — it does not calculate capacity and never says a lift is safe.
Open the tool → 📋Steps, hazards, controls down the hierarchy, and residual risk scored after the controls rather than before. Then eleven checks on why yours would get knocked back.
Open the tool → 📦Long-lead items do not fail on site. They fail three months earlier when nobody placed the order. Works backwards from the date you need it to the last day you can order it.
Open the tool → 🚧A crane that cannot lift is still on hire and the operator is still paid. Real money, recoverable on most contracts, and almost never written down on the day it happens.
Open the tool → 🏢A tower is sold on a cycle. Six days a floor, and the crane hire and every finishing trade sit on that number holding. Finds which activity is busting it, and when you top out.
Open the tool → 🆔An excavator ticket is not a licence, and half the arguments on site come from not knowing that. The 29 licence classes in the regulator’s own words, the common tickets that are not licences, and whose card expires next.
Open the tool → 🏗Every trade blames the crane and sometimes they are right. What it can actually deliver against what the job is asking — and the 85% line where a busy crane stops being able to absorb anything going wrong.
Open the tool → ❓Every job has RFIs sitting with a consultant, quietly becoming your delay. This builds one with the chase trail, the reference and the impact stated — and tells you what is missing before you send it.
Open the tool → 📝A client rep asks for something on site and it gets built. Six weeks later nobody wrote down who asked or when. Record it on the day, with who instructed it and what it affects.
Open the tool → ⏲Most extension of time claims fail on evidence, not entitlement. Set out the cause, the dates, the critical path effect and the mitigation — and see what is missing while you can still go and get it.
Open the tool → 💰Most people guess what a lost day costs, and guess low. Crew, supervision, plant on standby, site establishment, overhead and liquidated damages — the real daily number.
Open the tool → 📋Pick the work type — footings, suspended slab, structural steel, waterproofing, facade or services — and get a full Inspection and Test Plan with the hold points, witness points, evidence and references already filled in. Edit every line, then print or export.
Open the tool → 🛑Pick the activity — excavation, heights, lifting, confined space, hot work, demolition, precast, roof, live services or traffic — and get the checks that apply, a Green / Amber / Red answer, and who has to clear whatever is outstanding.
Open the tool → 📊Twenty questions about how your job actually runs. Get a score out of 100, a Green / Amber / Red across compliance, production, delivery, leadership and commercial, and the one gap costing you the most. No email needed.
Open the tool → 🚧Every other pre-pour checklist is a blank form. This one gives you an answer. Eighteen checks, then Green, Amber or Red — and if it is not green, what is outstanding and who has to clear it.
Open the tool → 🏢Is the deck actually ready? Formwork, backpropping, reo, PT, services, penetrations, survey, QA, engineer release, edge protection, access, crane and the pour plan — eighteen checks and a straight answer.
Open the tool → 🚪Most sites have the emergency sign but not the diagram. Drop exits, assembly point, extinguishers and YOU ARE HERE onto your site plan — the legend writes itself. Print A4 or A3. Your plan never leaves your device.
Open the tool → 💬A group chat for one job. Make a room, print the QR, the crew scans it at the shed. No app, no accounts, nobody handing over a phone number. Rooms delete themselves after a week.
Open the tool → 🚨The emergency block is blank on most sites. Fill it in once - address for 000, assembly point, wardens, first aiders - and print an A4 sign for the shed. Saves on your device.
Open the tool → 🏗Thirty days goes past without anyone noticing. Log every scaffold and see what is due, what is overdue, and what has been altered or struck and needs tagging out.
Open the tool → 🚧Two-week zone planner that flags trade stacking, out-of-sequence trades, wet/dry conflicts — and rain risk on weather-exposed trades. Prints zone QR signs.
Open the board → 🚛Loading zones, crane and hoist booked by the hour. Two trucks in one slot goes red before it happens at the gate — and crane slots get flagged when forecast gusts pass your wind limit.
Book the slots → ⚑Scan, report in 30 seconds — name optional. Time-stamped, stored locally on the device with a record number. It is not automatically sent to Obras Onsite. The near miss reported today is the injury that doesn't happen tomorrow.
Set up reporting → 🔥Hot works, confined space, excavation, heights — live countdowns that go red the minute a permit lapses. Wall QR so anyone can check.
Open the board → 📕Your legal memory, kept properly. Weather auto-filled, crew, deliveries, delays with times, instructions — print a signed dated page for the file.
Start the diary → ✅Crew scans the gate QR, ticks the declarations, signs on. Time-stamped, stored locally on the device with a record number. It is not automatically sent to Obras Onsite. Print the gate sign in one click.
Set up sign-on → 🚜QR tag on every machine. Operators scan, run the pre-use check — any fault flags tag-out and emails the record. Service dates tracked Green/Amber/Red.
Tag the fleet → 📅Green/Amber/Red register of every SWMS review date, pushed into your Outlook or Google calendar with a 14-day early warning.
Track reviews → 👋Visitors and new starters scan the gate QR, acknowledge the site rules, inducted on the record — time-stamped on the phone, copy to Obras Onsite. Completes the gate trio.
Set up inductions → 🚨Address, assembly point, hospital, contacts on one A4 sign — the details live inside the QR, so any phone that scans gets the full emergency page instantly.
Make the sign → 📋Insurances, SWMS, inductions, contracts per subcontractor — Green/Amber/Red at a glance, insurance expiry reminders into your calendar.
Track the subbies → 🎫Every licence, ticket and VOC for the crew with expiry RAG and 30-day calendar warnings. "He's ticketed" isn't a control — a register is.
Build the register → 📌A QR in every unit or zone — scan, log the snag against the exact location, assign the trade, close out on the spot. Print the full register.
Start snagging → 🤝The sequencing control, live: outgoing declares, supervisor verifies, incoming accepts — three signatures on one phone, record saved on it with a copy to Obras Onsite.
Run a gate → 🧱Slabs, footings, columns, piers — total m³ with waste allowance and truck count. Order short and the pour stops; order long and you pay for air.
Run the numbers → 💰Claim value, retention against the cap, GST — sanity-check the numbers live before the claim goes in.
Check the claim → 🗣A new 5-minute talk every Monday, with QR attendance stored locally on the device. It is not automatically sent to Obras Onsite. No paper, no clipboard.
This week's talk → 🌞The week ahead flagged green/amber/red with the work-rest call for each day. Live forecast, your city.
Check the week → 📜Four questions → do you have to notify the regulator, what to preserve, and the number to call.
Run the wizard → 🏗Day before, pour morning, during, after — tick it through on your phone. A failed pour costs a month.
Start ticking → ⚡Hit a cable, gas main, water or fibre? The next two minutes, in order. Save this page before you need it.
Know the drill → ⌚Scan on, scan off — hours build on your phone with a weekly total and a CSV for payroll.
Track your hours → 📷Scan any Obras Onsite QR with your phone camera — straight to the live controlled document record.
Open scanner →Set it once here and every tool below prints with your logo and company name on top - inductions, pre-starts, permits, registers, signs, the lot. Stored on your device, never uploaded.
Machine bucket loads by excavator size, trench & backfill, batter/benching safety check, productivity, fuel burn, wet vs dry hire money, road base tonnes — 7 calcs.
Open plant calcs → 📝The pocket book: buckets & barrows per m³, concrete bags, mix ratios by bucket, paint, tiles, plasterboard, render, decking, silicone, batts, stairs & ramps — 14 mini-calcs on one page.
Open the pocket book → 📏Mesh sheets with laps, bar weight by size (d²/162), chairs at 800 crs.
Calculate → 🧱Bricks or blocks per wall, mortar bags, core-fill volume.
Calculate → ⛏Bank to loose with bulk-out factors, truck loads, tonnage.
Calculate → ⚖Sand, road base, gravel, asphalt - both directions, live.
Convert → 🔗Load + angle → tension per leg, with the 90°/120° warnings.
Calculate → 🪂The minimum clear distance below your anchor - the number most get wrong.
Calculate → 📊20% markup is not 20% margin. See both, plus GST both ways.
Calculate → 👷Wage + super + comp + leave + downtime = the true hourly cost and charge-out.
Calculate →Set it once here and every tool below prints with your logo and company name on top - inductions, pre-starts, permits, registers, signs, the lot. Stored on your device, never uploaded.
The variation you didn't write down is the one you didn't get paid for. Log it in 30 seconds, date-stamped — and watch the unclaimed dollars until they're zero.
Stop the leak → 🌧The 5-minute guide to turning site diary records into extension-of-time claims that actually get approved. Evidence chain, notice, claim.
Read the guide → 💸Half the industry never chases the second half of their retention. Track every job's release dates with calendar reminders.
Chase your money → ⚖That genny you've hired 40 weeks this year? Payback point and the 3-year verdict, live.
Run the verdict → 🗑Waste gets paid for twice — buying it, then binning it. The real annual number, and what tighter ordering claws back.
See the leak →300 Australia-wide SWMS prepared for controlled release — sector packs, trade packs and every SWMS on its own page
Useful, free, and not tools — guides, explainers, a free document and crew support. They are deliberately not counted in the Free Tools total.
From buying to using it on site: downloading, branding your documents, what the QR codes do, the daily routine, and every question people actually ask.
Read the guide → 🤝MATES in Construction, Lifeline and Beyond Blue — the free numbers that matter, plus a printable A4 shed poster with QR.
Crew support → 🎁A controlled Obras SWMS sample — editable Word + PDF, Australia-wide. Being updated to the Australia-wide standard; leave your email and it is sent on release. No strings.
Grab it → Free Construction Checklists Obras Onsite Nine free construction checklists - site manager daily walk, prestart, concrete pour readiness, HSE inspection, SWMS review, floor… SWMS vs JSA vs SOP Which One Do You Need? SWMS vs JSA vs SOP explained for Australian construction: what each document is for, when a SWMS is legally required, and when a JSA… What Goes in a SWMS The 8 Required Elements What goes in a SWMS: the 8 elements every compliant Australian Safe Work Method Statement contains, the mistakes that get them…The tools above are free and yours to use. When the paperwork behind them needs a person who has run sites, Obras provides construction HSE support across South East Queensland — the Gold Coast, Logan, Brisbane, Moreton Bay and the Sunshine Coast, and elsewhere by quotation.
On the Gold Coast specifically: construction WHS consultant — Gold Coast.
