First aid kits, trained officers and emergency plans for NSW house sites

First aid on a residential site is usually treated as a shopping problem: buy a kit, put it in the site shed, tick the box. That approach fails the moment someone is actually injured, because the kit is only one part of what the work health and safety framework expects. The rest is a trained person who is on site when the injury happens, a route out of the building for the injured worker, and a route in for an ambulance.

On a house site those last two are harder than they sound. The access route changes as the job progresses. The temporary driveway is cut during the slab, the frame delivery blocks the street for an hour, and by fit-out the front of the block is a stack of plasterboard and a parked ute. None of that matters until the day it does, and then it matters completely.

This article covers how to plan first aid provision, trained officers and emergency access as one system for a residential job, and what to check when the site changes.

First aid provision is three obligations, not one

The reason a kit alone is not enough is that the duty is framed around the outcome, not the equipment. What has to be achieved is that an injured person receives timely first aid, and that the response is planned rather than improvised. That requires three things working at once.

The first is equipment: a kit that is fit for the hazards on the site, in date, accessible and known to everyone on site. The second is a person: someone with current first aid training who is present and available when work is happening. The third is a plan: what happens after the initial response, including how the person is moved, how the site is evacuated if the hazard is not contained, and how emergency services reach the point of injury.

If any one of those three is missing, the other two do not compensate. A well-stocked kit with nobody trained to use it is a box of consumables. A trained officer who is off site on the day is a name on a register. A documented plan that nobody has walked through is a document, not a response.

Deciding how much first aid provision the site needs

There is no single answer that covers every house site, because the answer depends on the size of the workforce, the distance to medical help, the hazards at the current stage and how the site is supervised. A small renovation in an inner suburb is a different risk profile from a new build on the edge of the metropolitan area where the nearest hospital is a long drive.

The practical approach is to assess the job at the start, write down the reasoning, and revisit it when the job changes stage. The things that drive the assessment are consistent across residential work.

• Number of people on site. A site with one or two trades needs less equipment and fewer trained people than a site with a full frame crew, but the trained officer still has to be present.
• Distance and access to medical help. The further the site is from definitive care, and the harder it is for an ambulance to reach the point of injury, the more the site has to be able to sustain the response on its own.
• Hazards at the current stage. Excavation, formwork, frame erection, roofing, electrical rough-in and fit-out each bring different injury patterns and different equipment needs.
• Whether the site is occupied. A house being renovated around an occupant, or a site with an on-site office, changes who might be injured and how they are moved out.
• Who is supervising. A site with a nominated supervisor present is easier to coordinate than one where the trades are working without direct supervision.

Write the assessment into the site safety documentation and keep it with the SWMS. When the assessment changes, the plan changes with it. The guide to SWMS for residential builders in NSW covers how that documentation fits together.

Choosing and placing the kit so it is actually used

The most common failure on a house site is not the absence of a kit, it is the location of the kit. A kit locked in the site container at the front of the block is effectively unavailable to a worker on the first floor at the back, especially if the person with the key is not the person who needs it.

Place a kit at or near the point of work, and make sure the location is covered in the induction for every trade. On a two-storey build that usually means a kit upstairs and a kit downstairs, or one kit positioned where the work is concentrated that week. On a renovation, it means a kit that moves with the work rather than staying in one room.

Contents need to match the hazards and the stage. Burns, eye injuries and sharps injuries are all foreseeable across a house build, and the equipment for each is different. As a general rule, if the hazard is present, the treatment item for that hazard should be present too. If you are unsure what the current requirement specifies for a site of your size and type, check the current first aid code of practice and the contents list supplied with the kit.

Record the checks. A kit that was last inspected months ago, with items missing and dressings expired, tells an inspector that the system is not running. The record is also what protects the principal contractor when the question is asked about what was done and when.

Trained officers, coverage and the back-up problem

A first aid certificate has a currency period, and the person holding it is not always on site. The plan has to deal with both facts. That means naming the trained officers, naming at least one back-up, and stating what happens when neither is present.

The coverage question is not just about the number of certificates, it is about whether a trained person is available at every time work is happening. A crew that starts early and finishes early needs a trained officer on that pattern. A weekend pour, a Saturday delivery or a night-time electrical connection all need coverage too.

If the site genuinely cannot maintain trained coverage at a given time, the response is to change the arrangement, not to accept the gap. Options include scheduling the work when a trained officer is present, adding another trained person, or, for isolated short-duration tasks, arranging the work so that the risk is controlled before the task starts.

The trained officer also has to be identifiable. On a site with multiple trades, nobody should be guessing who to find and where. Names and locations belong in the site emergency plan and on the induction, and they should be updated when people leave the job.

Emergency access is planned at the front of the job

The route an ambulance takes to reach an injured person is decided long before the injury. It depends on where the site entry is, whether the temporary driveway can carry a vehicle, whether the street outside can be kept clear, and whether there is a path from the vehicle to the point of injury.

Plan that route at the start, walk it, and record it. Then check it every time something changes. A material delivery that blocks the entry for an hour is fine if nothing happens in that hour, but the plan should say who clears the route and how quickly it can be cleared.

The route inside the site matters as much as the route to it. A stretcher needs a path, and that path has to be clear of stored materials, scaffold braces, leads and waste. On a two-storey build, the path down the stairs and out the door needs the same attention as the street outside.

Emergency access also connects to how the site is set up under the planning framework. Development consents and construction certificates for residential work carry conditions, and the Environmental Planning and Assessment (Development Certification and Fire Safety) Regulation 2021 sits within that framework. Access and site management conditions are part of what the principal contractor has to satisfy, so changes to site entry arrangements should be checked against the approval before they are made.

Evacuation, assembly points and the walk-through

Evacuation planning on a house site is often treated as something that belongs on a large project. It belongs on a house site too, because the hazards that trigger an evacuation, such as a gas leak, an electrical fault, a fire or a structural collapse, are all foreseeable on residential work.

Pick an assembly point that is clear of the house, clear of the scaffold and clear of any overhead services, and make sure it is reachable from the furthest point of the build. Mark it and describe it in the plan. On a tight inner-city block the assembly point may be on the footpath or across the street, which is workable as long as everyone knows where it is and the route is clear.

Electrical hazards are a common trigger for evacuation, and the controls that prevent them overlap heavily with evacuation planning. Safe Work Australia’s guidance on electrical safety is the reference point for how temporary supply, leads and tools should be managed, and those controls reduce the chance that an evacuation is ever needed.

Brief the plan and walk it. A short walk-through at the start of the job, repeated when the site layout changes, is worth more than a laminated plan nobody has read. If the job includes high risk construction work, the emergency arrangements should be consistent with the high risk work documentation. The working alone on site explains how that fits together.

Worked example: a two-storey build in western Sydney

A builder in western Sydney is running a two-storey project on a sloping block. The site entry is at the top of the block, the house sits below it, and the temporary driveway down to the slab is steep. The builder buys a first aid kit, puts it in the site container next to the entry, and records the name of the leading hand as the trained officer.

Three weeks into the frame stage, a carpenter sustains a significant cut to the forearm while cutting timber at the lower level. The leading hand is off site at a supplier. Nobody else on site holds a current certificate. The kit is in the container at the top of the block, and the route down to the carpenter is blocked by a stack of timber delivered that morning.

The crew does the right things in the moment: they control the bleeding with a clean dressing from a trade’s own vehicle kit, call an ambulance, and clear the timber by hand. The ambulance crew then has to park on the street and walk down because the temporary driveway surface is not suitable for the vehicle and there is nowhere to turn around at the bottom.

The delay is not catastrophic, but it is real, and the incident is reportable. When the inspector attends, the questions are predictable. Who was the trained officer on site at the time? Where was the kit? What was the access route for emergency services, and was it clear? The builder has a kit and a name, but no answer to the second and third questions.

The fix is not expensive. A second kit at the lower level, a second trained officer, a nominated person responsible for clearing the access route when a delivery arrives, and a marked assembly point at the top of the block clear of the frame. All of it decided before the frame went up rather than after the incident.

The same logic applies to scaffold. The handover and inspection arrangements that keep the scaffold safe also keep the evacuation route usable. The guide to scaffold inspection and handover on residential sites covers what to record and when.

Keeping the plan current as the job moves through stages

A first aid and emergency plan written at the start of the job is out of date by the time the roof is on. The plan needs to be revisited at each stage change, and the trigger points are predictable: excavation and footings, slab, frame, roof, lock-up, fit-out and handover.

At each of those points, ask the same questions. Who is on site and how many? Who is the trained officer and who is the back-up? Where are the kits and are they in date? Has the access route changed? Is the assembly point still clear? Has anything been stored in a way that blocks the route?

Record the answers and update the plan. The record is what demonstrates that the system is being run rather than written once and filed. It also gives the next person on the job, whether that is a supervisor, a subbie or a new starter, something concrete to work from.

For builders working through their continuing professional development, the safety and compliance content that covers this material sits alongside the broader requirements for maintaining a licence. The guide to how NSW builder CPD works explains the structure, and the PointCPD course catalogue lists the courses that cover site safety and emergency planning in more detail.

What to check before the next trade starts

Before any new trade arrives on site, run through the same short list. It takes minutes and it prevents the situation in the example above, where the kit and the trained officer are both in the wrong place at the wrong time.

• The trained officer is named and on site, and a back-up is named and contactable.
• A kit is accessible at the point of work, in date, and stocked for the hazards of the current stage.
• The emergency access route is clear from the street to the furthest point of the build, and someone is responsible for keeping it clear.
• The assembly point is marked, clear of the structure and known to everyone on site.
• The plan reflects the current site layout, and the induction covers it.

None of this replaces the judgement a supervisor applies on the day. It gives that judgement something to work from, and it means that when something goes wrong, the response is a plan being executed rather than a plan being written in real time.

Questions builders ask

• Compliance
• First Aid
• Site Safety

Published 15 September 2026. General information for builders, not legal, financial or engineering advice for a specific job. Check current requirements with the relevant regulator or standard before relying on them.