FIFO Carpenter Jobs
The FIFO ads use the word carpenter for three different jobs. One works with the concrete crews on a mine's construction, one puts up and shifts the camps where the crews sleep, and one keeps those camps in repair. All three want a qualified carpenter, so the first thing to decide is which kind of work you want.
What a FIFO carpenter is
A FIFO carpenter builds formwork for a mine's concrete, builds and moves the camps, or keeps a camp's rooms in repair, on a fly in fly out roster. Some of the same ads are for housing work in remote communities, on the same kind of roster.
FIFO carpenter jobs: Where to start
- Qualified, want construction workStart here
- Qualified, want a job that stays in one campStart here
- Not a qualified carpenterStart here
- Living outside WAStart here
- Want off the tools and onto a machineStart here
Find FIFO carpenter jobs
The ads are on SEEK (opens in a new tab), Indeed (opens in a new tab) and Jora (opens in a new tab). Search "formwork carpenter", "camp construction" and "camp maintenance" as well as "FIFO carpenter", because the three jobs are filed under different names.
Before you apply, check where each ad's flights leave from, called the point of hire. Getting there is usually up to you.
FIFO carpenter jobs at a glance
| Pay | $50 to $70 an hour in the ads, middle $60.50; $120,000 to $150,000 a year salaried |
|---|---|
| Rosters | 2:1 or 3:1 (two or three weeks on, one off) on most; 8:6 on some, and 14 on, 14 off on one camp job |
| Flies from | Perth for most, and several WA jobs take WA residents only; Adelaide and Brisbane for some |
| You'll need | A carpentry trade certificate, a White Card, a driver's licence and a police clearance; a medical after the offer |
| Experience | Trade experience on every ad; mine, civil or FIFO experience on several construction ads |
| Who hires | Labour hire agencies, construction contractors and, for maintenance, the camp companies |
Pay from the job ads of 12 October 2026; listings checked October 2026.
Can you do FIFO as a carpenter?
Short answer
You can do FIFO as a carpenter, and the October 2026 ads were for three jobs: formwork and concrete on mine construction, camp construction and relocation, and camp maintenance.
Formwork and concrete
Formwork is the timber and steel moulds that concrete is poured into, such as the footings for a crusher, the machine that breaks up the rock. A lot of the formwork ads want a concreter and carpenter in one, and one agency's included building work in the tunnels of an underground mine.
Building and moving camps
Camp construction is building the villages the crews live in, and moving them when the work moves. Camps are built from transportable buildings, made in a factory and trucked to site. The work is putting them together and fitting them out: one company's ad listed doors, windows, flooring, cabinets and furniture.
When the project ends
Both construction jobs come in projects. A crusher's footings or a camp build can take months, and when it's done the crew packs up and leaves site, a demob in FIFO talk. Then you move to the next project or go home, and a casual worker isn't paid in between. In October 2026, most of the formwork jobs were casual.
An ad that says "ongoing" or "long term" is telling you the agency expects more projects after this one. Fetch Recruitment's camp construction ads put it plainly: "a large pipeline of work upcoming on similar projects".
Camp maintenance
Camp maintenance is the upkeep of the village: "repairs, refurbishments, and new installations", in the words of a Compass Group ad for carpenters at BHP's Olympic Dam village in October 2026. That job flew from Adelaide on 14 days on and 14 off, with 12-hour days.
The work goes on all year, because a camp is open every day, but the jobs aren't always permanent: Compass's was casual, for projects. Camps also hire handypeople for the small repairs, so not every job needs a carpenter.
How do you get a FIFO carpenter job, step by step?
Short answer
You get a FIFO carpenter job through labour hire agencies, building and civil contractors, and the companies that run the camps, not the mine owners. None of the 14 carpenter ads read in October 2026 came from a mine owner.
Labour hire agencies employ you and send you to a contractor's site, and the ads came from them and from the contractors themselves. The civil contractors are the crews that build a mine's roads, dams and the flat pads that buildings sit on. Camp maintenance goes through the camp operators, such as Compass Group.
For a first FIFO job, look at the work that doesn't ask for mine experience: camp construction, camp maintenance and remote community work. The formwork and concrete ads were the ones that wanted experience on a mine, a civil job or FIFO itself. A September 2026 formwork ad put it as "Crusher construction or similar experience highly regarded".
With a carpentry trade, in WA
- Pick the kind of work first, because each asks for different tickets: camp maintenance, camp construction or formwork.
- Get your paperwork together before you apply: your trade papers, your White Card, a manual car licence and a recent police check. Every course asks for your USI (Unique Student Identifier), a free number you make online.
- Add the tickets your kind of work asks for: a heights ticket and a licence for elevating work platforms on camp construction, or an excavator or skid steer ticket on some construction crews. Get the ones your ads call essential; the rest are optional (where to get them).
- Live in WA if you can: some agencies consider only WA candidates, and an east coast flight to Perth can be yours to pay (where they fly from).
- Apply to several agencies and contractors in the same week, and to the camp operators for maintenance work.
- Once you're offered the job, the employer books the medical and drug test and the site inductions.
- On your first swing, formwork days are built around the pour, and camp maintenance days around the rooms the next crew needs (a typical day).
- Once you know the site, you can step up to run a crew, or move onto the machines (where it leads).
From outside WA
Outside WA, start with the camp maintenance jobs at Olympic Dam, which flew from Adelaide, or the remote community housing jobs in the Territory and South Australia, which wanted trade experience rather than mine time (carpenter jobs outside WA).
What the ads ask for
Most ads ask for:
- A Certificate III in Carpentry or a recognised trade certificate
- A White Card
- A driver's licence, manual on some ads
- A national police clearance, which several ads want current before you start
- Your own basic hand tools
After the offer, the employer arranges:
- A pre-employment medical and a drug and alcohol screen
- Site inductions
Nice to have, and what each one gets you:
- Working at heights and an EWP (elevating work platform) licence: the camp construction jobs, where one agency's ads called both essential
- Concreting experience: the many ads that want both trades from one person
- A skid steer (a small loader) or excavator ticket: some construction crews, and a first step toward running machines
- A BHP or Rio Tinto induction already done: the ads that list one, so a second mine job comes easier than the first
The tickets page has where to do each one and what it costs.
Without a carpentry trade
Two ways onto a site don't need the trade, and neither of them is carpentry. One is a trade assistant, a tradesperson's helper, on a camp build or a concrete crew. Fetch Recruitment hired trade assistants for the same camp project as its carpenters, and in October 2026 trade assistant ads paid $45 to $57 an hour.
The other is a handyperson or utility job in a camp, doing the small repairs: Cater Care's ad for one, in October 2026, asked for maintenance experience, not a trade. Neither job makes you a carpenter, because the trade comes from an apprenticeship, usually done in town. FIFO jobs with no experience has the other jobs that take beginners.
Where FIFO carpenter jobs fly from
Most WA carpenter jobs fly from Perth to the Pilbara and the Goldfields, and several take only people who already live in WA. One agency's ads said "Only WA candidates will be considered", and another's said interstate candidates couldn't be considered "due to the changing project schedules".
On the east coast, that's the first line to read in an ad. In September 2026 one formwork contractor's ads offered a "travel allowance for East Coast" but said "East Coast flights are not included", so the flight to the hub was yours, with an allowance toward it.
Carpenter jobs outside WA
Outside WA, October's ads flew carpenters from Adelaide to Olympic Dam and from Brisbane to formwork jobs in Darwin. Others were in remote communities rather than mines: houses at Wadeye and Ramingining in the Northern Territory, around Alice Springs, and on a drive-in roster in the APY Lands, Aboriginal lands in South Australia's far north. Those jobs asked for trade and maintenance experience, not mine experience, and a carpenter who only searches "mining" misses them.
How much can a carpenter make in FIFO?
Short answer
FIFO carpenters were advertised at $50 to $70 an hour in October 2026, with the middle ad at $60.50. That's $176,000 a year on a 2:1 roster, two weeks on and one off. Salaried jobs were advertised at $120,000 to $150,000 a year.
| Role | Advertised pay | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest hourly ad | $50 – $60 per hour | SEEK, Akron Group NT, October 2026 |
| Highest hourly ad | $65 - $70 per hour | SEEK, Fetch Recruitment, October 2026 |
| Salaried ad | $120,000 – $150,000 per year | SEEK, KHG Contracting, October 2026 |
The bottom and top ad of each kind, from 14 job ads of 12 October 2026; the middle hourly figure is $60.50 an hour. Only ads that stated a figure are in the table. Most don't.
To see what any of those rates comes to over a swing or a year after tax, put it into the FIFO pay calculator; the salary page has every trade side by side.
What the rate doesn't tell you
The roster decides the year as much as the rate does. A 2:1 roster is 2,920 hours a year on 12-hour shifts and an 8:6 (eight days on, six off) is 2,503, so a lower rate over a 2:1 year can beat a higher one on an 8:6.
A salary can look low next to the hourly rates, but a full-time job keeps paying between projects and comes with paid leave. A casual hourly rate stops when the work does.
Carpentry also pays less per hour on a mine than the electrical trade. Electricians in the same month were advertised at $60 to $105 an hour.
What does a FIFO carpenter do all day?
A typical day for a FIFO carpenter
The camp is the village of dongas, mess and gym near the mine, and the day starts there, on the bus before dawn. On a formwork crew it starts with the prestart, the morning safety meeting. Then it's 11 hours or so of marking out from the drawings, building forms, fixing steel with the concreters and stripping the forms off the last pour, out in the open. The pour date is fixed and the day is shaped around it.
On camp maintenance the day is a list of jobs around the village: a door that won't shut, a room to refit, furniture to put together before the next crew flies in. Either way, the work isn't what a chippy from a housing site is used to. Mine sites are steel, concrete and transportable buildings, and much of the timber is formwork that comes off again.
What is it really like being a FIFO carpenter?
Short answer
A FIFO carpenter works 10.5 to 12-hour days for a fortnight or three weeks at a stretch in the October 2026 ads, outdoors on construction or around a camp. The hard parts are the heat, the days in a row and the time away from home.
A chippy who went underground instead
A chippy of about eight years told his story in a YouTube video. He'd done civil and concrete work on mine sites without flying in, and said there was "huge potential for carpenters in WA". But he was sick of the trade, so he started underground instead, as a nipper, a drill operator's offsider, on a fortnight on and a fortnight off.
He lasted about ten months. As a greenie, a new starter, he earned less than he'd made as a chippy in town, and the heat underground had him drinking ten litres of water a shift. He said "if there are any underlying mental health issues there, FIFO will bring them out", and that "you need to have a very bulletproof relationship" to do it for long.
His advice to a tradie after a few years of big money was to use the trade or find a job on the surface, because it takes years to move up underground. He used his two weeks off to build something else, and left. If a swing turns bad, Lifeline is 13 11 14, any hour.
Where does a FIFO carpenter job lead?
Short answer
A FIFO carpenter job leads to leading hand or supervisor on a construction crew, to camp maintenance supervisor, or onto machines. All three showed up in October 2026's ads: leading hand formwork carpenters, a camp maintenance supervisor, and carpenter jobs that asked for machine tickets.
On the construction side, one formwork contractor was hiring leading hands, the tradespeople who run a small crew, alongside its carpenters. In the camps, a supervisor's job at Newman was to "lead a small trades team across remote camps".
The other road is onto a machine. Some construction ads for carpenters wanted a skid steer or excavator ticket, which puts a carpenter part of the way to an operator's job. The operator page has how that route works.
Is a FIFO carpenter job right for you?
Two honest questions
- Construction or a camp? Construction moves from one project to the next, with gaps between some of them, while a maintenance job keeps you in the same camp. Decide which you want before you compare two ads.
- Is it the trade you want, or the money? On a mine the carpentry is mostly formwork and fit-outs, and the step up is running a crew or getting onto a machine. If the trade itself is what you love, a building site in town may give you more of it.
Ready to look?
If you've read this far and still want in, get your paperwork into one file, then search for the job by name, formwork, camp construction or camp maintenance, not only the trade.
- FIFO carpenter jobs on SEEK (opens in a new tab)
- FIFO carpenter jobs on Indeed (opens in a new tab)
- FIFO carpenter jobs on Jora (opens in a new tab)
- All job boards, contractors and agencies in one list
Fake ads turn up on real job boards too. An ad that asks you to pay a fee before you start is a warning sign: report it to Scamwatch (opens in a new tab).
The job is one question. Whether the life suits you is six more. Three minutes. Free.
Is FIFO right for me?