Costing, quoting and contract

It is a manufacturer's guide and it assumes its own products. The 5% cut allowance is right for a rectangular area laid in stretcher bond; it is not enough for herringbone, 45-degree lay, or a curved or circular area.

North American, written in inches and converted here. Ignore the freeze-thaw content. Substitute compacted crushed limestone for the crushed aggregate base it describes, since that is the Perth default, and read its subgrade advice as being about compaction rather than saturation — a Perth sand subgrade drains fast but moves under load if it was never compacted.

It is a supplier's own tool and it returns loose supplied volume with no allowance for compaction or settlement. Add your own compaction factor to any base course result and your own settlement allowance to soil and mulch. Its sister pages also list the standard Perth reconstituted limestone block sizes, which are sold per block, not per square metre.

A turf farm's own page, so it is generous about soil depth on the way to selling turf. It publishes no wastage allowance for the turf itself — use your own, and note that its worked soil example contains an arithmetic error, so do the multiplication yourself.

The exemption starts on the day you install, so apply the moment your programme has a turf date. If your build slips, the days are gone.

The schedule marks only the current financial year's rates as prescribed by regulation; later years are indicative and inflation-adjusted. The levy is charged to the landfill operator, not to you, so what you actually pay is a gate fee or bin hire that includes it plus everything else.

These duties bind a person conducting a business or undertaking, which includes any contractor you engage and, on a site you control, shapes what you must let them do. A homeowner cutting their own pavers is not the regulator's target, but the dust does not know that — the controls are the same either way.

The AIQS product page publishes the price but not a contents listing, so buy it for the convention rather than for landscape-specific rules. It is a building measurement standard; soft landscape and irrigation are not its focus.

This is one supplier in Middle Swan and these are their retail prices, not a market average. Use the list to learn the shape of the pricing, then ring two other yards closer to your block. Prices and the products themselves change without notice.

Retail-facing yard, so the per-cubic-metre prices sit above a trade account at a bulk yard. What you are buying is Sunday trading, four locations and a free trailer, which for a small renovation is often worth the premium.

Sold here by the cubic metre. Other Perth yards sell the same material by the tonne, and the two are not interchangeable — always confirm which unit you are being quoted in before comparing.

The trap is the volume range. A load quoted at 7 to 10 cubic metres for a fixed price means your effective rate per cubic metre swings by 40 per cent depending on what actually turns up. Ask what volume that specific product loads at before you order, and make sure you have somewhere to put 10 cubic metres.

Product pages state prices are inclusive of GST and exclude cartage, and some pallets carry a refundable deposit — so the delivered cost is higher than the headline. Clay brick stock has been on backorder, so ring 13 15 40 for availability rather than assuming. Note that the Brikmakers site now redirects here, so the two brands are no longer separate places to price-check.

No prices are published — you must ring for a quote, which is normal for block suppliers here. Use the size and weight table for planning and get pricing from at least two yards.

One grower among several in the Perth region. Turf is a live product with a shelf life measured in hours in summer, so availability of a specific variety on a specific day matters more than a dollar per square metre. Confirm whether a quoted rate includes GST.

Read this to understand the wholesale tier, not as a place you can shop. Without an ABN you cannot buy here, and setting up a shell business to save money on a home garden is not a plan — the retail garden centres and the community nurseries below are the legitimate route.

Endorsement is about waterwise practice, not price. These are retail garden centres and you will pay retail. Greenlife Industry WA is the peak industry body for the sector here and has been since 1939, so the directory is a membership-based list rather than an exhaustive one.

Availability is indicative and changes with the season. Confirm with a grower or garden centre before you commit a species to a plan you intend to build from.

No prices are published on this page — ring or visit. Tubestock is small, slow to establish and needs a full first summer of careful watering, so it suits mass planting and verges rather than instant screening.

No prices are published online, so you cannot price-compare from home — you ring or visit. That is normal across the Perth retic trade and it is why you should get the same parts list priced at two counters.

Rates are inclusive of GST and set each financial year, and the page lists no clean fill or clean rubble category, so ring before you arrive with a trailer of broken limestone. Cash or EFTPOS only.

Member council rates apply to residents of the EMRC member local governments; everyone else pays the commercial column. There is a minimum commercial charge of $118.00 (half a tonne), so a small load is not cheap here. Wrapped asbestos is $330.00 per tonne with a $42.00 minimum.

The resident rates require proof of City of Canning residency; commercial and non-resident rates are materially higher (a mixed load over 400 kg is $315.00 per tonne). Every Perth council prices its own transfer station differently, so read yours rather than assuming these numbers.

Member council rates cover the western suburbs councils that own the facility; everyone else pays the higher column. Volume pricing rewards you for loading loosely and penalises a well-packed trailer, which is the opposite incentive to a weighbridge site.

One national chain's terms, and rates themselves are set per depot and not published. Use this for the shape of the charge, then ring three Perth branches for the actual number including delivery and pick-up.

The award is the minimum wage, not the market rate and not what a contractor charges out. It also does not cover superannuation, workers compensation or insurance, all of which sit on top of an employee's hourly rate.

One yard, one delivery fleet, and the delivery fee itself is quoted on request rather than published. Every Perth yard has different truck sizes, minimum loads and delivery zones — get yours in writing before you split an order across two drops.

These duties bind a person conducting a business or undertaking, which includes any contractor you engage. A homeowner cutting their own pavers is not the regulator's target, but silicosis is not interested in your employment status and the controls are identical either way.

Regional factors are applied to a national base, so Perth rates are modelled rather than surveyed street by street. The free alternative is better for a single block anyway: three real quotes and three real supplier prices, which is what the rest of this phase teaches.

National data, not WA data, and it excludes lawn mowing, garden maintenance and fencing-only businesses. It is also whole-of-business data across a financial year, so it describes the shape of a landscaper's cost base, not the margin on any single job.

Written for road and rail projects worth tens of millions, and mandatory only for Queensland transport projects. Ignore the escalation rates, the property resumption chapters and the rail sections. The contingency logic — that your contingency is set by how much you do not yet know, not by how brave you feel — scales down to a suburban block without modification.

The threshold changed on 1 July 2026, rising from $20,000 to $100,000 of construction value. If you are reading an older Perth building guide it will still quote $20,000.

Tamala Park serves Perth's north-west corridor. Every regional council and local government facility sets its own schedule and some will not accept commercial-quantity loads from a domestic vehicle at all, so confirm the fees and the acceptance conditions at the facility you will actually use.

An award minimum is a wage, not a charge-out rate. A legitimate subcontract rate has to carry superannuation, leave, workers compensation, public liability, vehicle, fuel, tools, consumables and the hours spent quoting and travelling. If a rate looks close to the award minimum, someone is not insured.

$450 is a lot for one garden, and it is a national book with state indices rather than a Perth price list. The free alternative that gets you 90% of the way is three real written quotes from Perth trades plus the ATO benchmark ratios above; buy the book only if you are pricing repeatedly or arguing about a large variation.

Verge works themselves are a separate approval. The page tells you to check your local council's guidelines and restrictions first, and to contact the council before planting a verge tree — that check is its own lead time and belongs in your staging plan.

The exemption is the property owner's responsibility, not the installer's, even when a contractor lays the turf. Apply on the day the lawn or garden goes in — applying late does not extend the window, it just shortens what is left of it.

The switch-off applies to bore users as well as scheme water users. If your staging assumed a garden bore made you exempt, it does not.

The designs are illustrative rather than site-specific and assume a fairly generous new-build bed. On a renovation, use the plant lists and the sequence, not the layouts.

BYDA returns asset owners' plans, not a marked-out site. Plans are indicative, private services past the meter are not on them at all, and on a Perth renovation the abandoned shed feed and the previous owner's retic mainline will not appear. Plans first, then hand-dig or vacuum-excavate to prove location.

The clock only starts on a valid, complete application. For a certified (BA1) application you also have to add the private building surveyor's own turnaround to produce the BA3 certificate of design compliance before you lodge anything — that is frequently longer than the council's 10 days. Fees and local requirements are Fremantle's own; check yours.

This is the clock for a development (planning) approval, which is a completely separate question from a building permit. Many landscape structures need neither, some need one, a few need both, and the two clocks run in sequence rather than in parallel.

If consent is refused, the route forward is an order from the Magistrates Court. Budget months, not weeks, and start the neighbour conversation before you finalise a boundary-hugging design.

No turnaround time is published, so ask when you lodge and treat it as an unknown-length gate in front of your excavation stage rather than a formality. Residential and commercial building applications go through BuilderNet rather than the standard online form.

Read it before any drainage or mainline stage. Perth sand has effectively no cohesion, gives no warning before it collapses, and a trench barely over a metre deep has killed people in this state.

The threshold applies to project value, not stage value. Splitting one project into stages to duck the threshold is not what staging is for — work out the whole-of-project figure and ask CTF if you are near the line.

The fact sheet carries no publication date on its face, so check the Building and Energy site for a newer edition before relying on it. It says home indemnity insurance is compulsory above $20,000 but excludes associated work performed alone — read the separate home indemnity insurance fact sheet below before assuming your landscaping contract is insured, because it almost certainly is not.

The registration exemption is not a permit exemption. The page is explicit that building permit requirements for Class 10a buildings still apply, and your local government still assesses the structure.

The page warns that registered practitioners and contractors may share the same registration number, so check the name, the number and the licence type together. A practitioner licence is not a contractor registration — the person can legally do the work but the business may not be entitled to contract for it.

There is a lodgement fee. The published figures are $122 standard and $61 concession, stated as current from 1 July 2025 and exclusive of GST; confirm the current fee on the complaint fees and forms page before you lodge.

There is no licence or registration category for landscapers, retic installers, paviors or arborists in WA — they will not appear here. For those trades the register tells you nothing, and you fall back on references, insurance certificates and written scope.

The code is listed as current by WorkSafe but still cites regulation numbers from the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996, which have been replaced by the Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022. Read it for the engineering and the depth thresholds, not for the regulation citations. The duties it describes are written for employers, main contractors and self-employed persons — the physics applies to you regardless.

Those are the work health and safety thresholds binding anyone doing the work for fee or reward. A homeowner working on their own home also has duties under the Health (Asbestos) Regulations 1992 and must dispose of the material at a facility licensed to accept it — check with your local government's environmental health officer first.

Plans show the assets of participating utilities in public areas and are indicative only. Private service runs inside your boundary — the old power line to a shed, an abandoned soakwell, the previous owner's poly — are not on anyone's plan. Combine BYDA with a cable locator and hand digging.

Listing means the business has been appointed to the program, not that it is the cheapest or the best designer. Filter by suburb and radius, and it also carries members outside WA.