QBCC Licence Check: Searching the Public Register

Searching when the name on the quote isn't the name on the licence

Search the licence number first if you have one — it is on the quote or the contract of any contractor who expects to be checked, and it is the only search string with no ambiguity. Without a number you are searching names, and this is where most nil results come from: the register holds the licensee's legal name, which for a company is the ACN entity and for a sole trader is a person, while the name on the van is a registered trading name. A painter trading as "Harbourline Painting" may hold their licence as "J & M Kovac Pty Ltd". Neither is suspicious.

Work through it in that order: licence number, then the trading name, then the legal entity behind it. If you only have a trading name and it returns nothing, the ABN Lookup service will give you the entity that owns that business name, and it is the entity name you then search. A nil result only becomes meaningful once you have tried the legal entity — and if the contractor cannot tell you what name their licence is under, that itself is the answer.

Which licence class actually covers your job

Two separate questions decide whether a licence is needed at all. The value test: building work over A$3,300 including materials and GST requires a licence, and hydraulic services design over A$1,100. The category test overrides the value entirely — plumbing and drainage, gas fitting, chemical termite management, fire protection, mechanical services, building design, site classification and completed residential building inspection all require a licence at any value, even a A$200 job.

For builders the class names cause more confusion than anything else on the register, because they sound like a ranking and are not one. Builder — Low Rise covers class 1 and class 10 buildings at any size — that is detached houses, townhouses, sheds, carports and fences with no floor-area cap — plus classes 2 to 9 up to 2000m² gross floor area, excluding type A and type B construction. So for a standard house, however large, Low Rise is not a lesser licence and there is nothing to upgrade to. Builder — Medium Rise extends structural work to a maximum of three storeys and excludes type A construction on classes 4 to 9. Builder — Open carries no limitation. The distinction only starts to matter once you are building apartments or commercial, which is precisely when people stop checking.

Trade contractor licences work the other way: they are narrow by design and named for the work. The practical check is not "is there a licence" but "does the class on this licence describe the work in my quote" — and if a job spans two trades, ask which licence covers which part before it starts, not after.

The licences that are not in the QBCC register

The QBCC register is not the whole picture, and assuming it is produces false confidence rather than a missed detail.

Electrical work is licensed separately. Queensland electricians are licensed through the Electrical Safety Office, which runs its own electrical licence search — a QBCC search will not return an electrician's electrical licence, and finding nothing there says nothing about whether they are licensed. This is the single most common reason a homeowner concludes a legitimate tradesperson is unlicensed.

Air conditioning is the case where searching QBCC alone misleads you most. Mechanical services is on the any-value list above, which makes it tempting to conclude that every air conditioning installer must hold a QBCC mechanical services licence. For a house, that is not what the regulation says: schedule 1A of the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Regulation 2018 excludes work carried out on a class 1a or class 10 building — houses, townhouses, sheds, garages — from being mechanical services work at all. Mechanical services licensing bites on commercial and class 2 to 9 work, which is why plenty of installers hold one; it is not the test for the split system going into your bedroom, where the ordinary A$3,300 building-work threshold applies like any other trade.

The licence that does apply to every job, regardless of value or building class, is federal and not in the QBCC register at all: handling refrigerant requires an ARCtick refrigerant handling licence from the Australian Refrigeration Council. The electrical connection is a third register again. So for a domestic air conditioning job the QBCC register is the least informative of the three — ask for the ARCtick number first.

The general rule worth carrying: one nil result in one register is not a finding. Know which register governs the trade in front of you before you draw a conclusion about anybody.

What "current" does and doesn't tell you

A current licence is a floor, not a verdict, and three things sit outside it.

It is not insurance. The Queensland Home Warranty Scheme is job-specific, not contractor-specific: it attaches to residential building work over A$3,300, the contractor is the one required to pay the premium, and it covers you if the work is not finished or is defective. A current licence does not tell you the premium on your job was paid — ask for the policy or the notice, and treat a contractor who is vague about it as a contractor who has not paid it.

It is not unconditional. Licences can carry conditions, and the register also surfaces directions to rectify — a formal instruction to fix defective work. One direction on a long history is a fact about a business, not a verdict on it; a pattern is worth asking about directly.

And it is a point in time. Licences lapse, and a check done six months ago proves nothing about today. Every licence badge on this site carries the date it was actually verified for exactly that reason — dates that bind to a real register pull, so a stale check reads as stale rather than as a current claim. If you checked a contractor yourself before Christmas and the job starts in March, check again; it costs two minutes.

What the trades on this site actually hold

Every business published here has been matched to a QBCC record, so this table is the real distribution of licence classes across the trades we cover — useful as a reference for what a given trade's licence should look like. It regenerates from each register refresh rather than being maintained by hand.