High risk work licences: the full list, and how long each lasts

A high risk work licence is a regulator-issued authorisation to perform a class of work that the law has decided is dangerous enough to be licensed rather than merely trained.

You cannot do the work without one. You also cannot rely on it to get you onto a site, which is the part that confuses people — and the confusion costs real money in wasted travel.

The classes

Licence classes are national, and each carries a code. The main ones:

Cranes and hoists

• CN — non-slewing mobile crane over 3 tonnes
• C2, C6, C1 — slewing mobile crane, to 20 tonnes, 60 tonnes, and over 100 tonnes
• C0 — slewing mobile crane, open (no capacity limit)
• CT — tower crane
• CB — bridge and gantry crane
• CV — vehicle loading crane, 10 metre tonnes and above
• CD — derrick crane
• CP — portal boom crane
• CS — self-erecting tower crane
• PB — concrete placing boom
• HM — materials hoist
• HP — personnel and materials hoist

Forklifts

• LF — forklift truck
• LO — order picking forklift truck

Elevating work platforms

• WP — boom-type EWP with a boom length of 11 metres or more

Dogging and rigging

• DG — dogging
• RB — basic rigging
• RI — intermediate rigging
• RA — advanced rigging

Scaffolding

• SB — basic scaffolding
• SI — intermediate scaffolding
• SA — advanced scaffolding

Pressure equipment

• RB, RS, RU — boiler operation classes
• TO — turbine operation

Codes and coverage occasionally change. Check the current class list with the regulator in your state before booking training, particularly for the crane classes where capacity thresholds define the boundaries.

What is not a high risk work licence

This trips up more people than the class list does.

Working at heights. Produces a statement of attainment against a unit of competency. Not a licensed class.

Confined space entry. Same — training and a statement of attainment, not a licence.

Traffic control and traffic management. Handled through state-specific accreditation schemes, not the national high risk work framework.

Asbestos removal. Licensed, but under a separate asbestos licensing regime, not as a high risk work class.

Standard 11. A Queensland coal induction, delivered as an accredited skill set. Not a licence.

White card / construction induction. A card, not a high risk work licence.

The practical significance is about renewal. A licence renews through a regulator on a fixed national cycle. A statement of attainment does not renew at all — its currency is whatever the employer or the site says it is, which is why two clients can want a working at heights refresher on two different schedules and both be right.

Any tracking system that treats all of these as one thing called "tickets" will handle the renewals wrong.

Five years, and the renewal is not where you trained

A high risk work licence lasts five years.

Renewal goes through the work health and safety regulator in the state or territory that issued it — not the RTO that assessed you. That is worth repeating because people habitually go back to the training provider, discover they cannot help, and lose weeks.

Renewal generally requires an application lodged before expiry, together with proof of identity. Requirements vary by jurisdiction, so check with your own regulator rather than assuming.

The important part: letting one lapse is not the same as renewing late. Depending on the jurisdiction and how long it has been expired, a lapsed licence can mean re-sitting the assessment — which is days of training and a fee rather than a form and a smaller fee.

Five years is also long enough that nobody remembers, and long enough to be invisible to any compliance review run on an annual cycle. It sits in exactly the same blind spot as Standard 11 and the coal mine workers' health assessment (formerly known as the coal board medical), and for exactly the same reason.

Mutual recognition

A licence issued in one state or territory is recognised in the others. A Queensland LF is an LF in Western Australia.

What is not automatically recognised is a site's requirement. An operator can — and in resources almost always does — require a verification of competency on their own plant, in their own conditions, regardless of what the licence says. Mutual recognition is about the licence. It is not about site access.

Licence versus verification of competency

The distinction that decides whether somebody works on Tuesday.

A worker can hold a current LF and have not touched a forklift in three years. A worker can hold a C2 obtained on one crane and be assigned to a materially different one. The licence is silent on both.

That is why sites require both, and why "they have their tickets" is not an answer to a request for competency evidence.

Tracking them across a team

Four things make this harder than it looks:

Licences and statements of attainment renew differently. One through a regulator on a national cycle, the other on a currency period somebody decided. Holding them in one undifferentiated list guarantees the wrong lead time on half of them.

A licence carries multiple classes. One card, several codes, and a worker may be assigned to a task that a different class covers. Recording "has HRW licence" loses the only information that matters.

The five-year clock is invisible. Anything reviewed annually will not see a five-year credential until the year it expires.

The lead time is long. A regulator application is not same-day, and if the licence has lapsed far enough to require re-assessment you are looking at course availability as well.

The practical minimum is to record the classes, not the licence; the expiry date, with a lead time that reflects your regulator's actual processing; and to keep the statements of attainment separate, because their currency belongs to somebody else entirely.