Builder's site boards, safety signage, hoarding and reflective signs — made at our Ravenhall workshop and delivered or installed anywhere in Australia. Compliant, tough, and ready when your program needs it.
Site signage is the part of a build nobody thinks about until it holds something up. The surveyor wants the permit details on the fence. The safety inspector wants the PPE signs at the gate. The client wants their name on the hoarding before the first site visit. And all of it is needed by a date that was set before anyone thought about printing.
This is where Melbourne Trade Signs started. Before the brand rollouts and the retail activations, we were printing site boards and safety signs for builders in Melbourne's west — the jobs where being right matters and being late is not an option. We still do, and we still print every one of them ourselves at our workshop on Orbis Drive in Ravenhall. No outsourcing, which means no waiting on someone else's queue when your date moves.
Two separate bodies of law apply to a Victorian site, and they are easy to confuse. Building legislation covers the permit and practitioner details. Occupational health and safety law covers the hazards. You need both.
Under regulation 41(2) of the Building Regulations 2018 (Vic), before building work starts the builder named in the permit must display a sign in a conspicuous position on the allotment — generally the front, accessible to the public. It has to show:
The sign must be up before work commences and must stay visible and legible for the duration of the building work. Failing to display it carries a penalty of 10 penalty units — $2,091 at the penalty unit value applying from 1 July 2026 (the value is indexed annually). A needless cost for a sign that takes a day to print.
Regulation 41(1) separately requires a copy of the building permit itself to be available for inspection on site. That is a document, not a sign, but the two obligations are often confused.
In practice most builders print this as a single board combining the statutory details with their own branding. There is no rule against that, and it means one sign does two jobs for the length of the project.
Separately, under Victoria's occupational health and safety regulations, a construction project valued at $350,000 or more requires the principal contractor to display a sign showing their name and contact telephone numbers, positioned so it is clearly visible from outside the workplace. A construction project means construction work costing $350,000 or more, including labour, materials and GST.
Worth knowing: this duty does not apply where the same details are already displayed on the Building Regulations site sign. In practice one well-specified board often satisfies both obligations, which is why we usually recommend combining them rather than printing two.
There is no single checklist of safety signs that applies to every site, because the signage has to match the actual risks. What is consistent is the standard the signs are designed to: AS 1319-1994, Safety signs for the occupational environment. It sets the colours, shapes, symbols and sizing that make a sign readable and instantly understood. The standard is voluntary in itself — it becomes binding when a regulation, a contract or a principal contractor's site requirements call it up, which on a commercial site is close to always.
On a typical Melbourne construction site that usually means site-entry signage listing PPE requirements and reporting procedure, mandatory signs for hard hats, hi-vis, eye and hearing protection, prohibition signs for unauthorised entry and no smoking, warning signs for overhead work, excavations and plant movement, danger signs where there is a live risk of serious injury, and emergency information signage marking first aid, assembly points and exits.
The building sign carries a defined penalty. Safety signage sits under general duty of care, so the consequence is not a fixed fine — it is an improvement or prohibition notice, a stop-work, or a much harder conversation if someone is injured and the hazard was not signed. Either way, signage is the cheapest compliance item on a site and the most visible one when it is missing.
This section is a plain-English summary to help you scope your signage, not legal advice. Penalty unit values are indexed every 1 July and the planning provisions are amended from time to time — Amendment VC294 changed the sign exemptions in October 2025. Requirements vary with project value, zoning, council and the nature of the work, and the legislation is amended from time to time. Confirm what your specific project needs with your building surveyor, your local council, or WorkSafe Victoria before you rely on it.
If you tell us the project type and value when you brief us, we will flag anything that looks like it is missing from your list — but the sign-off is yours.
Safety signs work because they are predictable. A worker recognises a blue circle as something they must do before they read a word of it. AS 1319-1994 is what makes that consistent across every site in the country.
| Sign class | Colour | Shape | What it means | Typical site example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prohibition | Red | Circle with diagonal slash | Must not be done | No unauthorised entry, no smoking |
| Mandatory | Blue | Solid circle, white symbol | Must be done | Hard hat, hi-vis, safety boots, eye protection |
| Warning | Yellow | Triangle, black border | Hazard, take care | Overhead work, excavation, forklift traffic |
| Danger | Red on black | Oval inside black rectangle | Serious injury or death risk | Live electrical, confined space |
| Emergency information | Green | Rectangle or square | Where safety equipment is | First aid, exit, assembly point |
| Fire | Red | Rectangle (commonly square) | Fire equipment location | Extinguisher, hose reel, hydrant |
| Restriction / limitation | Red | Circle, no slash | A numerical or defined limit applies | Speed limits on site roads, load limits |
The most common mistake we see is a sign that is technically correct and practically useless because nobody can read it from where they stand. AS 1319 gives recommended minimums:
So a sign meant to be read from 10 metres away needs symbols around 150 mm and capitals around 50 mm — which is a bigger board than most people picture. Tell us the viewing distance when you order and we will size it properly rather than printing what fits the budget and hoping.
Everything below is produced at our own workshop. That is the whole point — no middleman markup, no third party controlling your lead time, and consistent quality whether it is one board or a hundred.
Mandatory, prohibition, warning, danger and emergency information signage designed to AS 1319-1994. Printed on Corflute, ACM or metal depending on how long it needs to survive, with reflective options where the sign has to work after dark.
The statutory board carrying permit number, builder and surveyor registration details, combined with your branding so it works as advertising for the length of the build. Sized to read from the footpath, finished for the weather.
"Now selling", "coming soon" and development boards for display suites and site frontages. Large-format, printed in one run for colour consistency across every panel, and mounted on frames that hold up.
Full-length printed hoarding that turns bare fencing into a billboard for the development. Printed in panels, aligned properly at the joins, and installed by crews who have done it before. Mesh options where wind loading matters.
Aluminium composite signage for anything staying up longer than a season. Rigid, weatherproof and still sharp years later. The standard choice for site boards on commercial projects and long-run residential builds.
High-visibility reflective signage for traffic management, car parks, site entries and after-dark safety, produced to the reflective grade the job actually needs rather than the dearest one on the shelf.
Full and partial wraps, ute and van lettering, and consistent branding across a whole fleet. Cast vinyl that conforms to curves and holds, applied properly so it does not lift or bubble in the first hot week.
Portable A-frames, bollard covers and directional signage to move people, plant and traffic safely around site and point visitors to the site office instead of into the works.
That one question settles most material decisions. A six-week job and a four-year job want different signs, and paying for ACM on a temporary board is as much a waste as putting Corflute on a build that runs for years.
| Material | Typical outdoor life | Best for | Relative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corflute Fluted polypropylene board | 6–18 months | Temporary site boards, safety signage on fencing, short builds, anything you expect to replace | Lowest |
| ACM Aluminium composite panel | 5+ years | Long-run site boards, permanent mounts, commercial frontages, project signage that has to still look right at handover | Medium |
| Printed vinyl on substrate | 3–7 years depending on laminate | Applied graphics, hoarding panels, anything needing full-colour imagery at scale | Medium |
| Mesh banner | 1–3 years | Fence banners and hoarding where wind loading is a concern — air passes through instead of pushing the fence over | Low–Medium |
| Reflective media | 3–7 years | Traffic management, car parks, night-time site entries, anywhere headlights need to find the sign | Higher |
| Metal | 7+ years | Permanent safety signage, high-abuse locations, statutory signs staying beyond a single project | Highest |
These are working ranges from what we see come back off sites, not laboratory figures. Real life depends on sun exposure, whether the sign faces north, how it is fixed, and how much it gets knocked. A Corflute board on a shaded south fence will outlast one baking on a west-facing frontage by a wide margin.
Not sure? Tell us the build duration and where the sign is going and we will tell you which one to buy — including when the cheaper option is genuinely the right call.
The part that gets skipped in most quotes, and the part that decides whether the sign is still on the fence in three months.
Corflute and ACM boards get eyelets in the corners as standard, and we will add centre eyelets on anything over 900 mm so it does not flap and tear at the fixing points. Cable ties through eyelets onto temporary fencing is the standard site solution and it works, provided the eyelets are in the right places.
For freestanding boards we supply on frames or with star picket fixings. For hoarding, panels are fixed to the structure with the joins aligned so the graphic reads as one continuous piece rather than a set of posters. That alignment is the difference between hoarding that looks like a development and hoarding that looks like a fence with paper on it.
If some of that is missing, call anyway. Working out what you need is part of the job.
Call 0415 743 691 or send a brief. Project type, what you think you need, and when it has to be on site. If you are not sure what is required, say so — we will work through it with you.
Materials, sizes, finishing and fixings, priced against how long the sign has to last. Quotes back within 2 business hours during the week.
Send print-ready files or the raw details and we will set it up. Either way you approve a proof before anything goes on the printer.
Everything runs on our own machines. Nothing goes out to a third party, so nothing sits in someone else's queue when your date moves forward.
Metro and regional delivery, interstate freight, or pickup from Orbis Drive. For hoarding, wall wraps and anything at height, our own crews install it.
Your artwork and specs stay on file. Next site, next stage, or a board that got flattened by a truck — one call and it is reprinting.
Two separate sets of rules apply. Under regulation 41(2) of the Building Regulations 2018 (Vic) the builder must display, in a conspicuous position on the allotment accessible to the public, the registration numbers and contact details of the builder and the relevant building surveyor, along with the building permit number and the date the permit was issued. Regulation 41(1) separately requires a copy of the building permit to be available for inspection on site.
Under regulation 334 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (Vic), a construction project costing $350,000 or more requires the principal contractor to display signs showing their name and contact telephone numbers, clearly visible from outside the workplace. Note that this duty does not apply where those details are already displayed on the Building Regulations site sign — in many cases one sign covers both.
On top of those, any hazard on site needs safety signage appropriate to the risk — PPE requirements, prohibitions, warnings and emergency information — designed in line with AS 1319-1994. Requirements vary by project, council and zoning, so confirm the specifics with your building surveyor or WorkSafe Victoria.
At minimum: the builder's name, registration number and contact details; the relevant building surveyor's name, registration number and contact details; and the building permit number with its date of issue. The sign has to go up before building work starts and stay visible and legible for the whole build. Most builders add their logo and a phone number as well, because the sign doubles as advertising for the length of the project.
The legislation is about visibility and legibility rather than a fixed dimension, so the practical answer is: big enough to read from the footpath. For a builder's site sign, 900 × 600 mm is the most common size we print for residential, and 1200 × 900 mm or larger for commercial frontages.
For safety signage, AS 1319 gives recommended minimums: around 15 mm of symbol height for every metre of viewing distance, and around 5 mm per metre for uppercase text (4 mm per metre for lower case). A sign read from 10 metres therefore wants symbols near 150 mm and capitals near 50 mm. Increase both by about 50% in poor lighting or where the sign sits in a less conspicuous position.
Corflute is a lightweight fluted plastic board. It is cheap, quick to produce, easy to cable-tie to a fence, and typically holds up outdoors for around 6 to 18 months. It is the right call for temporary signage, short builds and anything you expect to replace.
ACM (aluminium composite) is two thin aluminium skins bonded to a plastic core. It is rigid, weatherproof, will not flex or fade in the same way, and commonly lasts five years or more outdoors. It costs more up front but is the better choice for a build running longer than a year, for anything mounted permanently, and for signage where a warped or faded board would reflect badly on the project.
Tell us the deadline and we will tell you straight whether we can hit it. Because we print everything ourselves in Ravenhall rather than sending it out, we control the queue — there is no third-party printer to wait on. Standard Corflute and ACM site signs are the fastest jobs we run. Call 0415 743 691 with your date and we will confirm on the spot rather than guessing by email.
Yes. We deliver across Melbourne metro and regional Victoria, and freight interstate. You can also pick up from our Ravenhall workshop on Orbis Drive during business hours, Monday to Friday, 8am to 7pm. For larger jobs — hoarding, wall wraps, anything at height — our own installers fit it rather than dropping it at the gate.
Usually yes, though the permit is generally for the hoarding structure and its occupation of public land rather than the printed graphic, and that comes from your local council's asset protection or local laws team. On the planning side, Clause 52.05 of the Victorian planning scheme exempts certain construction-related signage from needing a planning permit, subject to conditions — but those exemptions were rewritten by Amendment VC294 in October 2025, and large branded hoarding generally sits well outside them.
The short version: have the conversation with the council for the municipality you are building in early, before the artwork is signed off. We can supply drawings and specifications to support the application.
Yes, and most builders do. Send your logo and brand colours and we will set up a template — site boards, safety signage, A-frames and fence banners all matching. Once the template exists, reordering for the next site is a phone call rather than a fresh artwork job. If you do not have print-ready files, we will sort the setup.
Yes. We print on reflective media for traffic management, car parks, after-dark site entries and anywhere a sign has to be readable in headlights. Tell us where it is going and how it needs to perform and we will spec the right reflective grade rather than defaulting to the most expensive one.
Still deciding? See our construction hoarding guide and sign and banner sizes guide.
Branding the ute and the job-site fence as well? See tradie signs.
The full picture — every kind of sign we make, the materials we make them from, and how to work out which one you need.
See the overview →Fitting out a display suite, site office or your own premises? Illuminated signs, 3D lettering, fascia panels and window graphics.
See shopfront signage →Banners, pull-ups, posters, stickers and one-offs. No minimum order, no job too small, for site or for the office.
See the range →[ADD AUTHOR BLOCK: “Written by [NAME], [ROLE] at Melbourne Trade Signs, who has been printing site signage for Melbourne builders since [YEAR].” + photo]
Tell us the job and the deadline. We print it ourselves in Ravenhall, so we can tell you straight away whether we can hit it.