Concrete Driveway Repairs ACT - Cost and Diagnosis Guide

What Driveway Repairs Cost in the ACT

A damaged driveway presents as one of four things and the four have almost nothing in common beyond appearance. A crack. A sunken or lifted section. A surface that is losing material. Or a slab that has broken up altogether. Each has its own cause, its own repair and its own price, and the figures run from $28 a lineal metre at one end to a full replacement at $75 to $125 a square metre at the other.

What makes driveway repair difficult to quote honestly is that the cause sits underneath. A crack that has stopped moving is sealed at $28 to $65 a lineal metre and that is the end of it. The same crack still moving because the base has washed out or the clay beneath is swelling needs the cause addressed first, and sealing it simply hides the evidence for a season. Concreting services in the ACT that start by asking what changed before the crack appeared are asking the right question.

The ACT then adds a rule that shapes the decision more than most people expect. A like for like replacement in plain or asphaltic concrete is generally exempt from driveway layout approval. Any change to the size, shape, location or surface type requires an approval through City Services with a minimum of 15 working days. So replacing a cracked plain concrete crossing with plain concrete is quick, and taking the opportunity to upgrade to a decorative finish turns it into an approval job.

Further conditions apply once the work crosses the verge, which is the public land between the boundary and the kerb. Concrete there has to reach 32 MPa, above what a typical domestic slab uses. And a formwork clearance is a hold point before pouring, booked with four to five working days notice, with the driveway certificate depending on it. Those apply to a replacement bay on the verge just as they do to a new crossing.

Repair Costs by Damage Type

Driveway repair prices sort by what has actually happened rather than by how much of the surface looks affected. Sealing a stable crack runs $28 to $48 a lineal metre. Routing and filling a wider one runs $42 to $65. Stitching a crack that is still moving runs $95 to $180. Lifting a sunken section by slab jacking runs $120 to $280 a square metre, and cutting out and replacing a bay runs $160 to $320. Those five figures cover most Canberra driveway repairs and they differ by a factor of ten.

The comparison figure to keep in view is full replacement at $75 to $125 a square metre supplied and placed, plus $38 to $85 a square metre to remove the old slab. On a 45 square metre double driveway that is $5,085 to $9,450 all up. Any repair approaching half of that on a slab with a failing base is money going into something that needs replacing anyway. Run both figures before committing to the cheaper one. The cheaper figure is only cheaper if the slab survives.

Diagnosis belongs in the quote as its own item. A structural engineer assessment at $900 to $2,800 is warranted where movement is widespread or where the house shows cracking as well, and it is cheap relative to replacing a driveway twice. A building inspection in the ACT serves the same purpose on a smaller scale. Either is cheap relative to replacing a driveway twice.

Reading a Crack Before Anybody Quotes

Almost every driveway crack falls into one of four patterns, and telling them apart costs nothing and decides the repair. Fine random cracking confined to the surface, sometimes called crazing, is a finishing artefact and does no structural harm. A hairline under about two millimetres with both sides level is usually shrinkage from the original cure, which happens on most slabs and is sealed at most. Almost every concrete driveway in Canberra has some of this. It is not a defect and it does not spread.

A crack wider than two millimetres, or one where one side sits higher than the other, means something below has moved. That is the group where sealing alone fails, because the movement continues and reopens the repair. Stitching at $95 to $180 a lineal metre ties the two sides together with bars set across the crack, and it is the right answer where the slab is otherwise sound. Sealing alone over continuing movement simply reopens.

The fourth pattern is the one that points away from the concrete entirely. A crack running in a straight line across several bays, continuing through control joints as though they were not there and often carrying on into a path or up a nearby wall, is ground movement rather than a slab defect. On the reactive clay sites that cover much of Canberra that is the common case rather than the unusual one. The concrete is the victim rather than the culprit. Treating it as a concrete fault leads to the wrong repair.

A couple of observations belong on paper before a concreter arrives. Whether the crack has changed over a season, which distinguishes active movement from a settled crack. And whether anything upstream changed before it appeared, such as a new discharge from a downpipe, which is the vertical pipe carrying roof water down from the gutter, a removed tree or a neighbour excavation. Both answers steer the diagnosis more than any photograph. Write them down before the concreter arrives.

Settlement, Voids and Base Failure

A driveway that has sunk has almost always lost support underneath rather than compressed. Concrete does not squash. What happens is that the base beneath it washes out, consolidates or subsides, leaving a void, and the slab then cracks and drops into it under vehicle load. The crack is the symptom and the void is the problem. Repairing the symptom leaves the problem in place.

The causes in Canberra are reasonably consistent. Water tracking along the edge of a slab from a downpipe or a poorly graded garden bed erodes the base over years. Fill placed and not compacted properly at construction consolidates under traffic. A service trench backfilled loosely settles along its line, which produces the characteristic straight depression across a driveway. And reactive clay shrinking in a dry summer leaves the slab temporarily unsupported.

Identifying which applies decides whether jacking is a repair or a postponement. Where the void came from a one off event that has finished, filling it and lifting the slab is a genuine fix. Where water is still running along the same path, the void returns and the slab sinks again, which is why drainage correction at $650 to $2,400 frequently belongs in the same job. Lifting a slab over a void that is still filling with water achieves nothing.

Base repair at $45 to $110 a square metre is the alternative where the failure is extensive. It means removing the slab, rebuilding and compacting the base properly and pouring again, which is most of the cost of a replacement. At that point the honest comparison is against full replacement rather than against a cheaper repair. Excavation in the ACT is the stage that gets priced separately here.

Slab Jacking and Levelling

Slab jacking lifts a sunken slab back to level without removing it. Small holes are drilled through the slab, material is injected underneath until the slab rises to the right height, and the holes are patched. It sounds improbable and it works reliably where the slab itself is sound. Thousands of Canberra driveways have been lifted this way.

Polyurethane foam at $120 to $280 a square metre is the modern method. The foam expands in place, cures within minutes and weighs very little, so it does not add load to a base that has already failed once. The driveway is usable the same day, which on a Canberra property with a single crossing and no street parking matters a good deal. Four weeks of cure after a replacement is a different proposition.

Cement grout jacking, sometimes called mud jacking, at $95 to $210 a square metre is the older approach. It costs less, uses larger holes and takes longer to cure, and the grout is heavy, which on a weak base is a consideration rather than a detail. It remains a sensible choice on a stable base where cost matters more than speed.

Jacking does nothing in three situations and knowing them avoids wasted money. A slab broken into several pieces cannot be lifted as a unit. A slab that has lost its surface is not improved by levelling it. And a void that is still being created by running water will reform under the new foam. Each of those points to a different repair.

Spalling, Scaling and Frost Damage

A driveway surface that is flaking, pitting or shedding a thin layer is scaling, and in Canberra the cause is usually freeze and thaw cycling acting on a surface that was either finished poorly or never sealed. Water sits in the top few millimetres, freezes overnight, expands by around nine per cent and lifts the surface away in flakes. The slab underneath is usually sound while the top few millimetres are not.

The climate figures explain why this is more common here than in a warmer capital. Canberra Airport records a July mean minimum of 0.1 degrees, a June minimum of 0.9 and an August minimum of 1.2, which means a substantial run of nights below zero across three months of each year. No other Australian capital puts a driveway through that. It is the single biggest climate difference affecting concrete here.

Finishing practice at the original pour is the other half of the story. Overworking the surface or adding water to the top while finishing brings fines and water to the surface and leaves a weak skin a few millimetres thick. That skin is what comes off. A slab finished correctly and sealed before its first winter rarely scales at all.

Surface repair runs $85 to $190 a square metre for patching the affected areas and an overlay runs $55 to $130 a square metre to resurface the lot. Neither lasts if water keeps getting in, so sealing afterwards is part of the repair rather than an upsell. Driveway cleaning and sealing in the ACT is the follow up that protects the work. Repairing and then not sealing repeats the original mistake.

Tree Roots and the ACT Approval Question

A driveway lifted along one line, often with a crack following the same path, is frequently a root growing underneath it. The repair looks obvious and in the ACT it is not, because the tree may be protected and the root may not be yours to cut. That reverses the usual order of operations on this repair.

Under the Urban Forest Act 2023 a tree is protected where it reaches eight metres in height, has a canopy of eight metres, has a trunk circumference of one metre measured at 1.4 metres above natural ground, or appears on the ACT Tree Register as exceptional. Measuring circumference around the trunk rather than across it is the detail people get wrong, since a one metre circumference describes a trunk only about 320 millimetres wide.

A tree protection zone extends to the canopy area plus a two metre strip around the vertical canopy projection and four metres around the trunk measured at one metre, or as an approved Tree Management Plan specifies. Excavating, cutting roots or pouring inside that zone is work that may affect a protected tree, and a Tree Activity Application is required. Penalties reach $80,000 for an individual and $405,000 for a corporation.

The workable repairs where a protected tree is involved avoid cutting structural roots. A root barrier installed at the slab edge, a bridging slab designed to span the root, or a flexible surface such as pavers that accommodates movement are all used in Canberra for exactly this reason. Tree lopping and arborist services in the ACT and root removal both operate inside that framework rather than outside it. An arborist who knows the Territory rules saves time that one who does not will cost you.

Drainage as the Underlying Cause

A large share of Canberra driveway failures are drainage failures wearing a concrete disguise. Water running repeatedly along the same path erodes the base, and the slab above eventually cracks and drops. Fixing the slab without fixing the water buys a few years at best. The repair then gets blamed for a drainage problem.

The usual culprits are easy to find once you look. A downpipe, which is the vertical pipe taking roof water down from the gutter, discharging onto or beside the driveway rather than into a drain. A garden bed graded towards the slab instead of away from it. A kerb and channel detail that puts street water along the edge. Or a driveway with no fall at all, so water stands on it and soaks in at the joints.

Redirecting a downpipe at $280 to $850 is the cheapest preventative in driveway maintenance and often the most effective. Broader drainage correction at $650 to $2,400 covers grading, a spoon drain or a grated channel where the water volume justifies it. Landscaping in the ACT is often where the grading problem gets solved rather than in the concrete. A garden bed falling towards a slab undoes any amount of concrete work.

Water that reaches the Territory stormwater system is managed under environmental protection rules, which matters when a repair involves cutting or grinding. Slurry and wash water carry cement fines and have to be contained rather than hosed to the kerb. Environmental protection is administered through the ACT environment directorate.

The Like for Like Exemption

The single most useful thing to know about repairing a Canberra driveway is that a like for like replacement in plain or asphaltic concrete is generally exempt from driveway layout approval. That exemption is what makes a straightforward repair straightforward, and it is administered by ACT City Services as part of the driveway standard. Knowing it exists changes how a repair gets scoped.

Like for like means the same size, the same shape, the same location and the same surface type. Replacing a cracked plain concrete crossing with plain concrete in the same footprint sits inside the exemption. Replacing it a little wider, or shifting it half a metre, or changing to exposed aggregate or pavers, sits outside it and needs an approval. Surface type is named specifically, so there is no room to read it narrowly.

That creates a decision point that deserves a deliberate answer. A failing crossing is the natural moment to widen a driveway or upgrade the finish, and doing so converts an exempt repair into an approval job with a minimum of 15 working days plus whatever conditions attach. Neither choice is wrong and the cost difference is mostly time rather than money. Fifteen working days is the figure to plan around.

The verge conditions apply either way. Concrete on the verge has to reach 32 MPa and a formwork clearance is a hold point before pouring, booked with four to five working days notice, with the driveway certificate depending on it having been obtained. An exempt repair still meets both. Exempt from layout approval does not mean exempt from the standard.

When an Approval Is Needed Instead

Where the work steps outside the like for like exemption, the application is a smart form through City Services with a minimum of 15 working days. That minimum is the planning figure rather than the typical one, and a pour date set before the approval is in hand is a pour date that moves. Concrete is ordered days ahead, so a slipped approval wastes a delivery.

The dimensional requirements constrain the design more than people expect, and they are worth knowing before drawing anything. Clearances of 1.2 metres apply to ground level services and 1.5 metres to above ground services. A crossing sits six metres from the tangent point, which is where the straight kerb begins curving into the corner. Maximum skew is one in ten. A single garage crossing runs 3.0 metres at the boundary widening to 4.7 metres at the kerb, and a double runs 4.7 metres at both. Footpaths stay continuous across the crossing.

Grade is the constraint that catches sloping Canberra blocks. The maximum uphill verge grade is 17 per cent, and an application for a driveway with a grade above ten per cent needs three cross sections. Verge levels cannot be altered to ease a slope, so the solution has to be found inside the property boundary. Three cross sections are needed where the grade exceeds ten per cent.

For four or more units and for commercial properties the crossing is built to industrial strength through a Design Acceptance process rather than the domestic standard, at $1,200 to $3,800. Heritage sites are not permitted a new crossing, and work in a heritage area needs ACT Heritage approval before the City Services application proceeds. Both sit ahead of any concreting rather than alongside it.

32 MPa and Matching an Existing Slab

Concrete on the ACT verge has to reach 32 MPa and that figure applies to a replacement bay just as it does to a new crossing. Inside the property boundary the strength is a decision, and the practical rule for a repair is to match or exceed what is already there. Going weaker is the error that creates the next failure.

A repair bay poured weaker than the slab around it becomes the next failure point, which is the most common avoidable error in driveway repair. Twenty five MPa next to 32 MPa under the same vehicle load wears and cracks first, and the repair then needs repairing. Specifying 32 MPa throughout costs very little on a domestic pour and removes the problem. One strength across a whole job also avoids a mix up on the day.

Thickness matters alongside strength and is easier to get wrong on a repair. A bay cut out and poured thinner than the original slab sits lower in its load capacity whatever the strength. Ask what thickness the original slab measures once it is broken out, and ask for the repair to match it. A thinner bay in a thicker slab is a weak point by design.

Reinforcement continuity is the third element. Where a bay is cut out of a meshed slab, dowels drilled into the surrounding concrete tie the new pour to the old so the two move together. Without them the joint between them becomes a hinge, and that joint then opens. None of this is exotic and all of it belongs in the written scope.

Resurfacing as an Alternative to Replacement

Where a driveway is structurally sound but looks past it, resurfacing at $55 to $130 a square metre sits between repair and replacement. A thin cementitious overlay bonds to the existing slab and gives a new surface, and it can carry a decorative finish such as a stencil, a stamped pattern or a coloured topping. That makes it an appearance upgrade as well as a repair.

The condition that governs whether it works is the slab underneath. An overlay follows what it is bonded to, so a crack that is still moving comes through, a slab that is sinking keeps sinking and a surface that is delaminating takes the overlay with it. Resurfacing is a finish rather than a structural repair and treating it as the latter is how people waste money. An overlay is a finish rather than a structural element.

Where it does suit, the economics are attractive. A 45 square metre double driveway resurfaced at $55 to $130 a square metre is $2,475 to $5,850 against $5,085 to $9,450 for removal and replacement, with the work completed in days rather than weeks and with no layout approval required since the footprint has not changed.

A caution applies specifically on the verge. An overlay adds height, and on the verge the levels are set rather than negotiable, so the transition at the kerb and the footpath has to still work. Confirm that before resurfacing across the boundary rather than afterwards. Verge levels are set rather than negotiable.

When Repair Money Is Wasted

There is a point at which repairing a Canberra driveway stops making sense, and recognising it saves real money. The signals are consistent. The slab has broken into several independent pieces rather than cracked. More than about a quarter of the area is affected. The base has failed across the area rather than at one point. Or two or three repairs have already been attempted and the same problem has returned.

The arithmetic is straightforward once the figures are side by side. Full replacement of a 45 square metre double driveway runs $3,375 to $5,625 for the new slab plus $1,710 to $3,825 to remove the old one, so $5,085 to $9,450 all up. A repair at $2,400 on a slab that needs replacing within two years is $2,400 spent twice rather than saved once. That comparison is the one to run carefully.

Replacement also resets everything else. A new slab gets the strength, the thickness, the mesh, the joint layout and the fall that the original may never have had, and on a reactive Canberra site those four decisions are what determine whether it lasts. A repair inherits whatever was wrong with the original. Replacement is the only point at which those four decisions can be revisited.

The exemption makes the decision easier than it would be elsewhere. A like for like replacement in plain or asphaltic concrete is generally exempt from layout approval, so choosing replacement over repeated repair does not add an approval delay unless the opportunity is taken to change something at the same time. Deciding that deliberately rather than mid job is the useful part.

Silica Controls on Cutting and Grinding

Driveway repair involves more cutting and grinding than new work, and both release respirable crystalline silica. Saw cutting a bay out, routing a crack, grinding a lip and breaking out a slab all produce it. The standard is 0.05 milligrams per cubic metre measured as an eight hour time weighted average. That limit is low enough that a few minutes of dry cutting exceeds it.

Under the Work Health and Safety Regulation, uncontrolled dry cutting of crystalline silica materials is prohibited, and concrete falls within that alongside stone, masonry, brick and mortar. The control hierarchy starts with eliminating the task, then continuous water flow, then wet suppression with a second control, then on tool extraction with a second control, with respiratory protection last rather than first. Respiratory protection is the backstop rather than the control.

On a residential Canberra repair that means a wet saw rather than a dry blade, extraction on any grinder, slurry contained rather than hosed to the gutter and the work area kept clear. Those duties are administered by WorkSafe ACT and they reach residential driveways rather than only commercial sites. A Canberra homeowner can ask what the arrangement is before work starts.

The crystalline silica exposure prevention course has been a requirement since July 2023. Air monitoring is required at least every twelve months and on any change of control, with records kept for thirty years, and it measures exposure rather than reducing it. So monitoring offered instead of water or extraction answers a different question.

Warranty, Insurance and Who Pays

The ACT statutory warranty under the Building Act, which is a guarantee the law supplies regardless of what a contract says, applies to residential building work that required a building approval and cost $12,000 or more. A driveway is a non habitable structure and generally sits outside it, alongside pools and fences. That surprises people, since a driveway is commonly a larger job than one that is covered.

What applies instead is the Australian Consumer Law, and it is not a weak substitute. Services must be rendered with due care and skill and be reasonably fit for purpose, and no contract term can exclude that. The ACCC publishes what the guarantees cover. A repair that fails within months because the cause was never addressed is squarely within them.

Insurance follows a different logic again. Insurers generally cover accidental damage, such as a delivery truck breaking a slab, and generally exclude gradual deterioration, which covers almost all crack and settlement damage. The distinction turns on the cause rather than the appearance, so a report identifying what happened should be obtained before a claim is lodged. An insurer will ask, and an unsupported answer rarely helps.

Where a dispute arises with a contractor or a neighbour, the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal hears civil claims generally up to $25,000. Concreting is not a licensed occupation in the Territory, so there is no licence to check and no licensing complaint route. Access Canberra holds the register for the trades that are licensed, which on a driveway job typically means only a plumber connecting stormwater. Everything else rests on the insurance and the written scope.

The verification checks worth making in the Territory are short. Access Canberra holds the construction occupation licence register, so a plumber connecting a stormwater point on a Canberra driveway job can be checked there even though the concreter cannot. WorkSafe ACT publishes the work health and safety duties behind the silica controls. Those two sources cover most of what a homeowner can usefully verify before engaging anybody.

Timelines and the Canberra Repair Window

Most driveway repairs are quick and the waiting is in the curing rather than the work. Crack sealing is a morning. Slab jacking with polyurethane is a day and the driveway is usable the same day. Cutting out and replacing a bay is two days of work followed by seven days before light traffic and 28 days before anything heavy.

A full replacement runs longer. Removal is a day or two, base preparation and formwork another two, the pour a day, then the same seven and 28 day cure periods. Where a layout approval is needed, add the 15 working day minimum at the front. That is a minimum rather than an average.

Canberra narrows the window at both ends of the year. A pour into a frosted base cures poorly and stays weaker for its whole life, and the airport records a July mean minimum of 0.1 degrees, so winter mornings are routinely unusable until mid morning. High summer brings the opposite problem of a slab setting faster than it can be finished. October to November and March to April are the reliable months in the Territory.

The practical planning point is parking. Four weeks without vehicle access is a long time on a Canberra block with a single crossing and restricted street parking, and that is worth sorting out before the pour date is confirmed. Slab jacking exists partly because it avoids this entirely. Same day use is a substantial practical advantage.

Canberra District Pricing and Housing Era

Driveway repair costs across the ACT track the age of the crossing and the site conditions rather than the suburb. The era decides the original strength, thickness and whether mesh was used at all, and those three decide whether a repair has something sound to work with. A thin unmeshed slab gives a repair very little to hold onto.

The pattern is consistent across the Territory. The inner Canberra suburbs bring the oldest crossings, regularly unmeshed and thinner than current practice, with mature trees close by. Woden Valley and Weston Creek bring the steepest blocks and the grade constraints that go with them. Belconnen and Tuggeranong bring crossings from the 1970s to 1990s now reaching the end of their service life. Gungahlin and the Molonglo Valley bring current stock where a failure is more likely to be a base or drainage problem than age.

Access is the site factor that moves a repair figure most across the ACT. A narrow inner Canberra street with no room to turn a truck, or a steep Woden Valley block where material has to be carried rather than wheeled, adds to every stage. Rubbish removal across the Territory is a separate figure on any repair that breaks out concrete, since the waste is charged by weight, and excavation in the ACT is its own line wherever a base has to be rebuilt. Both are predictable costs rather than surprises.

Joints, and Why the Original May Have Had Too Few

A great many Canberra driveways crack because they were poured with too few control joints for the site, and that deserves understanding before paying to repair the result. A control joint is a deliberate weakness cut or tooled into the slab so that shrinkage and movement crack along a straight line somebody chose rather than across the middle of the driveway. Concrete will crack somewhere, so joints decide where.

Spacing follows slab thickness and site reactivity, and a reactive Territory site needs joints closer together than a stable sand one of the same dimensions. Sites are classified under AS 2870 from class A for stable sand and rock through S, M, H1, H2 and E for increasing clay reactivity to P for problem sites, and much of the ACT sits in the middle and upper part of that range. A driveway poured to a coastal spacing on a class H Canberra block is short of joints from the first day. Nothing about the finished slab shows it until the cracks arrive.

Retrofitting joints into an existing slab runs $45 to $95 a lineal metre and it is a genuine repair rather than a cosmetic one. Where a crack has already formed in a straight line, cutting a joint along it converts an uncontrolled crack into a controlled one, seals it with flexible sealant and stops it ravelling at the edges. Where cracking has not yet appeared but the spacing is clearly inadequate, cutting joints in preemptively is cheaper than the repairs that follow. It also lets you choose where the lines run.

Expansion joints are the related item and they sit at the boundaries rather than across the field. A driveway needs one where it meets the garage slab, where it meets the kerb and wherever it abuts a different structure, so the two can move independently. A driveway poured hard against a garage slab with no joint between them transfers movement straight into the building, which is a more expensive problem than a cracked driveway.

What to Look for in Driveway Repair Quotes

A driveway repair quote that can be compared with another separates six items. The cause of the damage, stated in writing. The diagnosis, invoiced on its own where it involved more than a look. The repair method and the area or length. The concrete strength and thickness where anything is being poured. Any drainage or base work as its own figure. And whether a layout approval is needed, which turns on whether anything is changing.

The cause is the item to insist on because every other figure depends on it. A quote that proposes sealing twelve metres of crack without saying why the crack appeared has described work rather than a repair. Where a concreter genuinely does not know, that is a fair answer and the right response is a diagnosis rather than a guess dressed as a price. Any concreter can look under a lifted edge.

Provisional items belong here more than almost anywhere, because nobody can see under a slab. Ask for base repair and any void filling as provisional figures with rates attached rather than fixed sums. That protects both sides and it is what an experienced Canberra concreter will propose unprompted. Verify the ABN and public liability insurance with the insurer directly, since concreting is not licensed in the Territory.

Getting the Best Value from Driveway Repairs

The cheapest Canberra driveway repair is the one that addresses the cause, and the cheapest cause to address is almost always water. Redirecting a downpipe at $280 to $850 or regrading a garden bed away from the slab costs a fraction of any concrete work and prevents the base erosion that produces most settlement. It is also the one item a homeowner can arrange without a contractor.

The second saving is timing the repair before the damage spreads. A single crack sealed at $28 to $48 a lineal metre while it is still one crack is trivial. The same crack left for three Canberra winters takes water into the base, loses its edges to frost and becomes a bay replacement at $160 to $320 a square metre. Three winters is all it takes.

Bundling pays where a crew and a truck are coming anyway. A driveway repair, a path, a rubbish removal of the broken concrete and any landscaping grading in one visit costs less than four separate attendances. Rubbish removal in the ACT is charged by weight on broken concrete, so combining loads also helps. A single bin across several jobs beats one bin each.

The last point is about the exemption. A like for like replacement in plain or asphaltic concrete is generally exempt from layout approval, so where a crossing is genuinely finished, replacing it in kind is both the cheapest route and the fastest. Changing the surface at the same time converts it into a 15 working day approval job, which may still be the right choice but should be a decision rather than a surprise. Raise it at quote stage rather than on the day.

One further Territory specific point concerns sequencing with other outdoor work. Where a retaining wall in the ACT or paving is planned on the same Canberra site, doing the earthworks and the walls before the driveway avoids running machinery across a new slab. Access Canberra and City Services approvals each run on their own timetable, so a programme that sequences them correctly is the one that avoids rework. Running a bobcat across a fresh slab is the classic avoidable error.