What a solar farm labourer actually does

The short answer

A labourer on a solar build moves things, places things, fixes things down and keeps the place safe and tidy, to a plan set by somebody else. The things are steel and glass: the posts, the tubes and brackets of the tracker structure, and the modules that go on top. The plan is the day's target for the crew, set at the morning meeting and measured at the end.

That is the whole job in one sentence, and it hides the two facts that matter most. The first is that a solar farm is built in rows, and a row is the same task repeated until it is done. The second is that almost none of it is done alone: a labourer works in a crew, usually in pairs, and the pace of the row is the pace of the crew.

The phases of a build that want a labourer

A solar farm is not staffed once. It is built in phases, each with its own crew, and solar farm construction jobs sets the four of them out in order. Seen from a labourer's boots, they look like this.

Civil. The earthworks phase belongs to the machines, but a civil crew still needs people on foot: the security fence around the whole array, survey support and marking out, traffic control inside a site where dump trucks and graders are moving, trench work by hand where a machine cannot get in. A labourer here is closer to any regional civil job than to anything solar.

Mechanical. The phase that hires labourers in the largest numbers of the whole project, and where most people's first solar job is. The piles are in the ground; the crews assemble the tracker structures on them and then carry the modules out row by row and bolt them on. Almost every task in the next section belongs to this phase.

Electrical and commissioning. Fewer, then almost none. The labourers who stay into the electrical phase are mostly those who have become trade assistants to the electrical crews; by commissioning the crew that built the array has demobilised and moved to the next one.

The practical consequence is that "labourer wanted" on a solar listing nearly always means the mechanical phase is starting or under way, and that the job has a natural end when the last row is installed. That is not a reflection on anybody; it is how a construction schedule works, and it is why people who do this work follow the phase from one build to the next.

The tasks, one by one

What a mechanical-phase labourer actually does, in roughly the order a row sees it.

• Unloading and distributing. Modules and structure arrive on trucks in packs and pallets. They are lifted off by plant, and the labourer's job is to guide the load, strip the packaging, check for damage and stage the material where the row crew will need it.
• Assembling the structure. Bearings onto the posts, torque tubes into the bearings, brackets and clamps onto the tubes. Fasteners, a lot of them, fitted to a sequence and to a torque setting, with a tool the site issues and calibrates.
• Installing modules. Carried out in pairs, lifted into the clamps, seated, clamped and checked. It is the task the whole build is measured by, and the one where a careless moment costs the most: a dropped module is scrap.
• Torquing and checking. Coming back down the row after the fitters to bring every fastener to specification and mark it. Boring, essential, and one of the places a supervisor decides who is careful and who is not.
• Fencing and survey support. Earlier in the build, and again around the compound and the substation later: post holes, wire, gates, and holding the staff for the surveyor.
• Traffic control and spotting. Standing between people and machines, in a landscape with no walls and a lot of noise, so that the telehandler bringing the next pallet does not arrive where somebody is bent over a clamp.
• Housekeeping. Packaging, pallets, offcuts and cable ties, collected and sorted, all day. It sounds like the bottom of the list and it is how a site stays inductable.

Nothing on that list needs a trade, and only one item needs a course beyond the construction induction: traffic control, which generally wants a ticket of its own, issued under rules that differ by State — which tickets a listing asks for is the article for that. All of it needs attention, and a body that will do the same movement correctly in the afternoon that it did in the morning.

A day, in order

It starts early, before the sun has made the array uncomfortable. The first stop is the prestart: the whole crew, the day's plan, the hazards that are different from yesterday, the weather call, and who is working with whom. This is where a labourer is allocated to a row, a task and a partner, and it is the moment to say if something is wrong — a tool, a body, a ticket that has lapsed.

Then the drive or the walk out to the work front, with the water, the sunscreen and the gear for the next few hours, because the ute is not coming back for a forgotten glove.

The middle of the day is the row. Modules up, clamps on, next pair of posts, repeat. Breaks are set by the site, not by the crew, and on a hot day the heat policy sets them: earlier starts, longer breaks, a stand-down if the thermometer says so. Taking those breaks properly is part of the job, not a break from it. Working on a solar farm in Australia describes the heat, the dust and the rosters as a whole, and it is the article to read before this one if you have never been on a regional site.

The end of the day is pack-down: tools counted and returned, the row left safe, the packaging cleared, the count for the day given to the leading hand. Then the bus, the camp or the drive back to town, and the same thing tomorrow for the rest of the swing. Whether it is the bus and a camp or the drive and a room in town is on the listing's accommodation line, and what that line promises has its own article.

What a crew expects of a labourer

Nobody expects a new labourer to know solar. The crews are built on the assumption that they do not, and the mechanical phase is taught on site in the first days. What is expected is older than solar and is the same on any construction site.

That you are there. Every day of the swing, at the prestart, ready. On a site where the crew is planned to the person, one absence moves the whole row's target.

That you do it the way the prestart said. A row is the same operation done to a tolerance many times over. A site is not looking for a better idea in the first week; it is looking for the sequence, the torque setting and the clamp position, exactly as briefed.

That you look after the material. Modules are glass. The labourer who stages a pallet properly and carries a module by the frame rather than the face is the one who gets asked for again.

That you watch for the machines. The mechanical phase puts more people on foot around more moving plant than any other phase of the build. Awareness of what is behind you is the most important skill on the site and it cannot be taught by a ticket.

That you say what you do not know. Nobody is annoyed by a question at the start of a task. Everybody is annoyed by a row that has to be done again.

Before any of that, the site has to be able to let you in. Tickets for solar farm jobs goes through what a labouring listing on this board actually asks for, and the short version is that the construction induction card is the floor and very little stands above it for this trade. If you have never worked on a site at all, solar farm jobs with no experience is the article about the application itself — what counts as evidence when you have none of the right kind.

What the job is not

Three things are worth ruling out, because each of them brings people to the wrong listing.

It is not a rooftop job. Nobody climbs anything. The array is on the ground, the modules are at waist and chest height, and rooftop installation is a different industry that this board does not list.

It is not a technical job. A labourer does not wire, terminate, test or programme anything. The electrical work is licensed work done by licensed people, and the nearest a labourer gets to it is as a trade assistant, later, supporting one.

It is not a machine job. Telehandlers, piling rigs and excavators are operated by people who hold the tickets and the hours for them. A labourer works beside the machines and spots for them, but does not drive them — which is one of the roads out of labouring, not part of it.

What comes after

Labouring is where most solar careers start and it is not where they have to stay. The first step, and the most travelled, is trade assistant: being attached to a fitter or an electrician rather than allocated to a task. From labourer to trade assistant is about how that step is granted, and the short answer is that it is granted on site, by people who watched you work, and never by applying for it.

Beyond that the roads fork — towards plant and the tickets that go with it, towards an electrical apprenticeship, towards leading hand and the paperwork that comes with a crew. Every one of them starts on the row, being the person a leading hand asks for by name.

Pay is deliberately not on this page. What the labouring roles on this board were advertising, and what those figures do and do not include, is in what solar farm jobs pay, with its date on it.

Three questions people ask before applying

Do you need experience to be a solar farm labourer? Not solar experience, no. The mechanical phase is designed to take people who have never seen a tracker, and the crews pair newcomers with somebody who has done it for the first days. What a recruiter is reading for is evidence that you have done physical work outdoors, that you turn up, and that you can follow a briefing — and any previous job that shows those three is relevant.

Is it hard work? Yes, and honestly so. It is repetitive, it is outdoors in inland heat and dust, it involves lifting and carrying all day, and the days on a roster are long and consecutive. It is not technically difficult, which is a different thing. The people who leave in the first week leave because of the heat and the repetition, not because they could not do the task.

Do labourers install the panels? Yes, and it is the centre of the job. Installing modules is the task a mechanical crew is measured by, and on most sites it is labourers, working in pairs under a leading hand, who carry them out and clamp them on. The cabling behind them is a separate task, and it is not labouring work.

Where to look

Read the labouring listings with this article beside you. The requirements section of a real advertisement tells you which phase the site is in, whether there is a camp, and what — beyond the induction card — the employer actually wants, and that is more useful than any description of the trade in general.

General information only. Tasks, crew structures and site rules differ between contractors and between projects; this article describes the pattern the industry uses, not a commitment by any employer. Induction and licensing requirements are set by each state and territory. For pay and conditions, the national source is fairwork.gov.au.