Quick Answer
A work order is a formal instruction to perform a specific piece of work — a repair, service, installation or inspection. A good work order includes:
- Work order number, status, customer, site and asset.
- Scope of work, tasks and checklists.
- Assigned labour, required skills/tickets and estimated hours.
- Parts, materials and equipment.
- Safety docs — SWMS, JSA, permits, isolations, pre-starts.
- Schedule, priority and target completion.
- Cost, PO number, sign-off and evidence (photos, notes).
It's the document that dispatches labour and materials to site — and the record that gets invoiced against.
What is a work order?
A work order is a formal instruction to do a specific piece of work on a specific asset, site or customer job. It captures the what, the where, the who, the when and the how much — scope, site/asset, crew and skills, parts and equipment, safety and permits, schedule and priority, and cost and sign-off. Once a work order is approved and dispatched, it's what authorises labour, parts and safety documents to hit the site.
In Australian mining, heavy industry and field service, work orders are the operating currency. Every breakdown, every planned maintenance service, every shutdown task and every customer call-out runs off a work order — and how well those work orders are written is usually the difference between a job that makes money and one that eats it.
What should a work order include?
Work order number & status
A unique work order number for tracking, plus a clear status — draft, scheduled, in progress, on hold, completed or invoiced. This is how a work order stops getting confused with a quote, a job card or a purchase order.
Customer, site & asset
Who the work is for, where it's happening (site, mine, address) and which asset it's on (plant number, serial, component). On a Tier-1 mine site, tying the work order to the asset is what makes service history usable.
Scope of work & tasks
A plain description of what needs to be done, broken into tasks or checklist items. Vague scope is where variations, disputes and reworks come from — a good work order removes ambiguity before the crew leaves the yard.
Labour, skills & crew
Who's assigned, what skills or tickets are required (HRWL, EWP, confined space, working at heights, VOCs) and the estimated hours. The work order should refuse to dispatch a worker whose tickets have expired.
Parts, materials & equipment
The parts, consumables and equipment needed — with stock, purchase orders and delivery status linked. No more crews turning up to site to find the seal kit is still at the supplier.
Safety & compliance
The SWMS, JSA, take-5, permits, isolations and pre-starts required before work starts. On a mining work order, this is non-negotiable — a Tier-1 audit will pull evidence straight from here.
Schedule, dates & priority
Requested date, scheduled start, target completion and priority (breakdown, urgent, planned, shutdown). This is what the scheduler drags around on the board when priorities change at 6am.
Cost, billing & sign-off
Charge rates, PO number, quoted vs actual hours and parts, sign-off from the customer or supervisor, photos and completion notes. This is what turns a completed work order into an invoice in minutes, not weeks.
How a work order flows in practice
Raise the work order
Someone identifies work — a customer request, a breakdown, a scheduled service, a defect from a pre-start. The work order is raised with scope, site, asset and priority.
Plan & schedule
The scheduler assigns the right crew and skills, checks parts availability, attaches the SWMS/JSA/permits, and drops the work order onto the day/week.
Dispatch to the crew
The work order lands on the crew's phone or tablet with everything they need — scope, tasks, safety docs, parts list, site access, customer contact.
Execute & capture on site
Workers complete pre-starts, JSAs, tick off tasks, log labour and parts used, take photos, note defects and get customer sign-off — all inside the work order.
Review, invoice & close
Supervisor reviews and approves. Work order is costed, invoiced, and closed. Service history is now attached to the asset for next time.
Types of work orders
Reactive / breakdown work orders
Raised when something breaks — a haul truck, a conveyor, a compressor. Priority is usually urgent, safety and isolation are critical, and downtime cost is the driver.
Preventative maintenance work orders
Generated on a schedule (hours, kilometres, days) from a maintenance plan. Predictable, parts-planned, and the backbone of asset reliability.
Inspection & servicing work orders
Statutory inspections, calibrations, pressure tests, thickness tests — with tightly defined checklists and evidence requirements.
Project & shutdown work orders
Bundled into a shutdown or capital project. Multiple work orders roll up under one project scope with tight sequencing, isolations and permits.
Customer / service call work orders
For contractors doing external service work — a mining client, a facility, a builder. Charge rates, PO numbers and customer sign-off drive the commercial side.
Work order vs job card vs purchase order vs quote
Quote
A pre-work commercial document — scope and price offered to a customer before work starts. It doesn't authorise anyone to swing a spanner.
Work order
An internal instruction to do the work — scope, crew, parts, safety, schedule, cost. Once approved it's what dispatches labour, materials and safety docs to site.
Job card
The paper (or digital) sheet a worker used to fill in on site — labour, parts, notes, sign-off. In modern systems the job card is just the mobile view of the work order.
Purchase order
An external commercial document authorising a supplier to deliver goods or services. A work order can generate one or more POs, but they aren't the same thing.
Who uses work orders?
Mining contractors
Work orders drive breakdowns, planned maintenance, shutdowns and service work across Bowen Basin, Pilbara, Hunter Valley and Goldfields operations — with SWMS, JSAs, permits and Tier-1 audit evidence attached.
Heavy equipment workshops
Boilermakers, hose shops, component rebuilders and mobile plant maintainers run everything off work orders — parts, labour, machining, testing and customer sign-off.
Electrical, mechanical & HVAC
Field service work orders push scope, safety, parts and customer details to the technician's phone, and pull hours, photos and sign-off back for invoicing the same day.
Facilities & property services
Reactive and planned work orders across cleaning, security, HVAC, fire, electrical and grounds — often bundled under a single facilities contract with SLA-driven priorities.
Civil, drilling & rope access
Crew-based work orders with tight scope, permits, isolations, and evidence — where the difference between profit and loss is captured on the same document.
Work order best practices
- Every work order has a unique number, a status, a scope and an owner — no exceptions.
- Safety docs (SWMS, JSA, permits) are attached before dispatch, not after the crew is on site.
- Parts and skills are validated before scheduling — no truck rolls without the seal kit or the HRWL.
- Labour, parts and photos are captured on the crew's phone as work happens, not from memory that night.
- Sign-off is digital — customer, supervisor and worker signatures are stored on the work order.
- Every closed work order updates the asset's service history and the customer's job history automatically.
- Invoicing happens off the work order — quoted vs actual is visible, and variations don't get lost.
Related reading: What is field service software? · What is job scheduling software? · What is document management software? · What is a contractor management system?.
