Commercial Diving & Marine Construction Work SWMS
CIH-reviewed Commercial Diving & Marine Construction SWMS — inshore SSBA diving, underwater welding, dredging, marine pile-driving. AS/NZS 2299 series and AMSA-aligned. State variants for all coastal jurisdictions.
SWMS variants reference your state’s WHS legislation. Instant download after payment.
Commercial diving and marine construction encompasses surface-supplied breathing apparatus (SSBA) diving operations, underwater wet welding and cutting, dredging, marine pile-driving, and subsea inspection works conducted in inshore, harbour, and coastal environments. These activities sit within the highest-risk category of construction work under WHS Regulation 2025, triggering multiple High Risk Construction Work (HRCW) classifications including diving work, work in or near water with drowning risk, and operation of powered mobile plant on floating platforms. A Safe Work Method Statement is mandatory before any worker enters the water, mobilises a dive spread, or commences pile-driving from a barge — and must be prepared in consultation with the dive supervisor, dive team, vessel master, and principal contractor. This SWMS aligns with AS/NZS 2299.1:2015 (Occupational diving operations), AMSA Maritime Orders, and the Marine Safety (Domestic Commercial Vessel) National Law Act 2012, addressing the convergence of diving, maritime, and construction WHS duties unique to this sector.
Hazards identified
7 hazards covered, sorted by priority.
Type II DCS with neurological deficit, paralysis, recompression chamber treatment, potential permanent disability or fatality
Asphyxiation, hypoxic brain injury within four minutes, fatality, coronial inquest and PCBU prosecution under s32 WHS Act
Cardiac arrest underwater, secondary drowning, severe burns to hands and torso, mandatory notifiable incident
Diver pinned against intake with crushing force exceeding 10 tonnes, immediate fatality, body recovery hazard
Blunt force trauma, crush injury to diver in water column, vessel/crane crush against jetty structure
Loss of consciousness underwater, convulsions, regulator loss, drowning, requirement for nitrox or mixed gas planning
Severance injuries, fatality, vessel sinking, AMSA marine incident notification and joint WHS/maritime investigation
Control measures
Hierarchy-of-controls order: elimination → substitution → isolation → engineering → administrative → PPE.
- 1Elimination — Eliminate diver intervention by deploying ROV or remote tooling for inspection, cleaning and light intervention tasks wherever survey or intervention objectives permit.
- 2Elimination — Schedule pile-driving and dredging in separate shifts to diving operations, prohibiting any simultaneous operations (SIMOPS) within a 50-metre exclusion radius.
- 3Substitution — Substitute air diving with surface-supplied nitrox for dives between 20–40 metres to reduce nitrogen loading and extend no-decompression limits per AS/NZS 2299.1 Section 5.
- 4Substitution — Replace wet welding with dry hyperbaric habitat welding or topside fabrication and underwater bolted connections where structural class and program permit.
- 5Engineering — Install positive lockout-tagout on all dredge pumps, intakes and sea-chests with verified zero-flow confirmation before diver entry, per delta-P risk assessment.
- 6Engineering — Deploy two-diver SSBA spread with through-water voice comms, hot-water suits, bailout cylinder rated for full ascent, and standby diver dressed-in and ready within 30 seconds.
- 7Administrative — Conduct dive supervisor pre-dive brief using this SWMS, JSEA and dive plan; verify dive log, gas inventory, chamber availability within 2 hours and DCIEM/USN tables for profile.
- 8Administrative — Establish marine exclusion zone with Notice to Mariners, Securité broadcast on VHF Ch 16, dive flag Alpha displayed and surface guard vessel maintaining 360° watch.
- 9PPE — Issue AS/NZS 2299.1-compliant SSBA helmet (Kirby Morgan or equivalent), hot-water suit, weight harness with quick-release, dive knife, and bailout bottle for every working diver.
- 10PPE — Topside crew wear AS/NZS 4758 Level 100 PFDs, AS/NZS 1801 hard hats, cut-resistant gloves for umbilical tending and AS/NZS 1337 eye protection during welding cable handling.
Applicable Codes of Practice
Mandates dive team composition, supervisor competency, gas supply redundancy, decompression tables and emergency procedures for all commercial SSBA diving works.
Imposes PCBU duties for dive safety log, medical certificates, competency verification under AS/NZS 2815 and incident notification for all general diving work.
Requires vessel master and crew of dive support vessels under 35m to hold appropriate Certificates of Competency and comply with safety management system requirements.
Defines marine pile-driving and underwater construction as high-risk construction work, triggering SWMS preparation, consultation and review duties under WHS Reg s299.
High-Risk Construction Work triggered
All SSBA inshore diving, underwater welding and subsea inspection meets the section 291 definition of diving work irrespective of depth or duration.
Topside crew, riggers and pile-driver operators work on barges, jetties and vessels with continuous fall-into-water and drowning exposure during marine construction.
Crane barges, hydraulic pile hammers, cutter-suction dredges and dive support vessels constitute powered mobile plant operating within the active worksite.
PCBU must prepare SWMS before work starts, consult dive team and crew, retain records for two years (seven if notifiable incident occurs); maximum penalties under WHS Act Category 1 are substantial and indexed, with current maximum following the prevailing WHS schedule.
Who this is for
- →Commercial dive contractors on port and harbour works
- →Marine construction PCBUs delivering wharf and jetty projects
- →Dredging contractors on coastal navigation and reclamation works
- →Subsea inspection and IRM contractors servicing offshore assets
What you receive
- ✓Editable DOCX template — Microsoft Word compatible
- ✓State-specific WHS legislation schedule (NSW/VIC/QLD/SA/WA/TAS/NT/ACT)
- ✓Hazard register with risk ratings + hierarchy-of-control mapping
- ✓Worker sign-on register, pre-start checklist, and incident escalation flow
Worked example
On a wharf refurbishment project at a regional commercial port, the dive supervisor convenes a pre-start brief at 0630 alongside the support vessel before a planned 14-metre SSBA inspection and anode replacement dive on a concrete pile cluster. The crew of two working divers, one standby diver, tender, and barge crane operator gathers around the dive control container. The supervisor opens this SWMS on the tablet and walks the team through each hazard line by line. When the underwater welding hazard line is reached, the team confirms wet welding is not scheduled — the control is therefore not engaged. However, the delta-P hazard prompts discussion: a nearby cooling water intake serves the adjacent fuel terminal. The supervisor pauses sign-on, calls the terminal operator on VHF to confirm pump lockout and zero-flow verification, then documents the confirmation in the SWMS amendment field. Each diver signs the document, acknowledging the dive plan, bailout procedure, and recompression chamber location (45 minutes away by road, within AS/NZS 2299.1 limits). Mid-dive, the tender reports the umbilical fouling on a tyre fender. The supervisor refers to the entanglement control, deploys the standby diver, and the working diver clears the umbilical without incident. The event is logged in the SWMS daily review section for the next shift handover.
Related legislation
- WHS Act 2011 (model)
- WHS Regulation 2025
- AS 2550 — Cranes, hoists and winches; AS 1418 series
Frequently asked questions
Is commercial diving high risk construction work?
Yes. Diving work is one of the categories of high risk construction work listed in section 291 of the WHS Regulation, and section 299 requires a SWMS to be prepared, consulted on with the dive team and kept available at the workplace before anyone enters the water. Marine construction on the same spread pulls in two further categories: work on or near water where there is a risk of drowning, which captures the tender, riggers and barge crew, and the movement of powered mobile plant, which captures crane barges, hydraulic hammers and dive support vessels. The SWMS has to address all of them together, not just the dive.
How does the SWMS handle differential pressure near intakes and sea-chests?
As a lockout problem, not a diver-skill problem. A diver drawn onto an open intake can be held by forces exceeding ten tonnes, which makes it unsurvivable and turns the recovery into a second fatality risk. The control requires positive lockout and tagout on every dredge pump, intake and sea-chest in range, with zero-flow physically verified before entry, and the confirmation recorded. In practice that means contacting the asset owner, for example an adjacent fuel terminal, obtaining pump lockout on the radio, and documenting it as a SWMS amendment before sign-on resumes. Nothing goes in the water on a verbal assurance alone.
Does this cover underwater wet welding and cutting?
Yes. Electric shock from stray DC current or damaged stinger insulation is treated as a high priority hazard, because cardiac arrest underwater becomes a drowning within minutes. The preferred control is substitution, using dry hyperbaric habitat welding, topside fabrication or bolted underwater connections where the structural class and program allow. Where wet welding proceeds, the SWMS covers isolation and knife-switch discipline, electrode changes only on a dead circuit, and topside crew wearing cut-resistant gloves for umbilical tending and eye protection to AS/NZS 1337 while handling welding cable. If the task is not scheduled that day, the crew records the control as not engaged.
What dive spread and standby arrangements does it require?
A two-diver surface-supplied spread with through-water voice communications, hot-water suits and a bailout cylinder rated for a full ascent, with a standby diver dressed in and ready to deploy within thirty seconds. The supervisor verifies the dive log, gas inventory, decompression profile against DCIEM or US Navy tables, and recompression chamber availability within two hours before the brief closes. Nitrox is substituted for air between twenty and forty metres to reduce nitrogen loading. Diving and pile-driving or dredging are never run simultaneously inside a fifty metre radius, which removes the pile-strike and intake exposure rather than managing it.
How is the exclusion zone managed against third-party vessel traffic?
Through the maritime system, not just site signage. The SWMS requires a Notice to Mariners for the works, a Securite broadcast on VHF channel sixteen, the international code flag Alpha displayed, and a surface guard vessel maintaining a full three hundred and sixty degree watch for the duration of the dive. Propeller strike from an unaware transiting vessel is a severance and fatality mechanism, and it also triggers a joint maritime and WHS investigation. Vessel master and crew competency under AMSA Marine Order 505 sits alongside these controls, so the document is written to be used by the dive supervisor and the master together.
Document details
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