Transportable Home Delivery and Siting SWMS

Suits transportable home suppliers, builders, transport operators and installers who deliver a home to site and set it on its supports. It follows the work from planning the delivery and preparing the site, through the road trip, entry and positioning, the crane lift, jacking and stump setting, and work under the home, to connections and handover. Loading the home at its origin has its own SWMS.

Siting a transportable home on its supports is construction work, and a SWMS is required for high risk construction work (WHS Regulation s 299). Movement of powered mobile plant (the carrier, crane and auger) is ticked. Also tick the items that apply to your job: a fall of more than 2 metres, work on or near energised electrical installations or services such as overhead lines, a road in use by traffic, or a trench or shaft deeper than 1.5 metres.

New to SWMS? Read What Is A Safe Work Method Statement?

What Is Covered In Our Transportable Home Delivery and Siting SWMS?

After the standard pre-start checks, the job steps run from “Plan the delivery: home, route, permit, site, foundations and lifting method” to “Release the carrier, make the site safe and hand it back”. The hazards and controls include:

• Oversize load strikes on the road
• Contact with overhead power lines
• Carrier or crane bogging or overturning on soft ground
• Overloaded crane and wrong lifting points
• Workers under the suspended home
• Home slipping off jacks and cribs
• Crush injuries when setting stumps and levelling
• Underground services struck by stump holes
• Work in the subfloor under the home
• Unlicensed electrical, gas and plumbing connections
• Falls from doorways before steps are fitted
• Public and neighbours entering the work area

High Risk Construction Work

These high risk construction work items (WHS Regulation 2011 (Qld) s 291) are already ticked because they are part of this work. Tick any others that apply to your job:

• Is carried out in an area at a workplace in which there is any movement of powered mobile plant

Licences, Training and Competency

• Driver licence for the class of vehicle driven, and training and verified competency in load restraint (chains, straps and binders)
• Pilots and escorts qualified as the permit or the road manager require (pilot duties have their own SWMS)
• High risk work licence for the crane class: non-slewing mobile crane over 3 t (Schedule 3 item 14) or the slewing mobile crane class for the capacity (items 15 to 18), held by the crane operator
• Dogging licence (Schedule 3 item 4) for the person who does dogging work as defined in Schedule 19: applying slinging techniques, including the selection and inspection of lifting gear, to safely sling a load, or directing a plant operator in the movement of a load when the load is out of the operator’s view; the Mobile Crane Code of Practice 2024 says the crane operator should not do their own dogging
• Lift supervisor with authority to stop the lift, and workers trained in the jacks, cribs and lifting system used
• Engineer’s design or advice for footings, stumps and piers, and for doubtful ground or heavy lifts
• Licensed electrical worker for electrical connection (Electrical Safety Act 2002 s 55); licensed plumber, drainer and gas fitter for water, sewer and gas
• Safety observer or spotter trained in the exclusion zone, hand signals and the stop signal
• Traffic controller accreditation where the permit or traffic management plan call for traffic control
• General construction induction training card (white card) and the site induction
• An adequate number of workers trained in first aid, or access to them (WHS Regulation s 42)

Legislation and Codes of Practice Referenced

• Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld)
• Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (Qld)
• Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (Qld): ss 214, 215, 216 and 219 (powered mobile plant and plant that lifts or suspends loads) and s 304 (underground essential services information)
• Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (Qld): ss 306C and 306D (falls in construction work) and ss 315L and 315M (loads lifted over an adjoining area, and closing it; s 315L does not apply to housing construction work)
• Mobile Crane Code of Practice 2024
• Managing Risks of Plant in the Workplace Code of Practice 2021
• Managing the Risk of Falls at Workplaces Code of Practice 2021
• Hazardous Manual Tasks Code of Practice 2021
• Excavation Work Code of Practice 2021 (stump holes)
• Confined Spaces Code of Practice 2021 (when a subfloor meets the definition)
• Traffic Management for Construction or Maintenance Work Code of Practice 2008
• Managing the Work Environment and Facilities Code of Practice 2021
• First Aid in the Workplace Code of Practice 2021
• How to Manage Work Health and Safety Risks Code of Practice 2021
• Electrical Safety Act 2002 (Qld)
• Electrical Safety Regulation 2026 (Qld): ss 10 to 13 and schedule 2 (overhead line exclusion zones)
• Electrical Safety Code of Practice 2020 – Working near overhead and underground electric lines (distances come from the 2026 Regulation)
• Heavy Vehicle National Law (Queensland), applied by the Heavy Vehicle National Law Act 2012 (Qld): s 6 (heavy vehicle means a vehicle with a GVM or ATM of more than 4.5 t), s 26C (primary duty of each party in the chain of responsibility), s 96 (compliance with mass requirements), s 110 (national regulations may prescribe loading requirements), s 111 (compliance with the loading requirements) and s 228 (duty of driver to avoid driving while fatigued or unfit to drive)
• National Load Restraint Guide (National Heavy Vehicle Regulator): guidance, not law
• WorkSafe Queensland guide: Working safely in the house relocation industry (guidance, not law)
• Safe Work Australia model Code of Practice: Managing the risk of fatigue at work (model code, not approved in Queensland; guidance only)

What You Get

• An editable Microsoft Word document (17 A4 landscape pages). Type your business, client and job details once and they fill in on every page, with a space for your logo
• 10 job steps for this work, each with its hazards, controls, initial and residual risk scores and the person responsible
• PPE listed for this job: safety boots, hard hat and high-visibility clothing; safety glasses and cut-resistant gloves for handling chains, straps, cribs and fixings
• Emergency arrangements for: crane overturning, load drop or home slipping off jacks, contact with a power line and person trapped under or crushed by the home, a jack or the load
• Plus the parts every Work Safety QLD SWMS shares, from the s 291 checklist to the worker sign-on sheet (see the layout in our free SWMS template)

Adjust it for your site, plant and crew, and talk it through with your workers before work starts. Please make sure you read our Disclaimer before downloading this SWMS.

Checked against the Queensland laws and codes of practice listed above. Last reviewed November 2026.