Find Ground Worker Jobs on Grafter

Sign up free as a Grafter, build your groundworker profile with your tickets, plant experience, travel radius, and photos of past digs, drainage runs, and foundations. Jobs matched to your skills and area land in your feed and inbox. Apply in one click and message the client directly to confirm scope, start date, and rate.

Yes. Grafter is free to join for ground workers — no signup fee, no monthly subscription, and no charge to apply for jobs. Grafter only charges the client side for using the platform, so whatever you agree with a client for your groundworks is what lands in your pocket.

Once the client picks you for a groundworks job, you draft a work agreement on the platform covering scope, plant hire arrangements, muck-away responsibility, and payment terms. Payment is released securely through Grafter when the work is signed off, so you are not waiting on agency timesheets or chasing subcontractor invoices.

Strong groundworker profiles include a CSCS card (blue or gold where applicable), every CPCS or NPORS ticket you hold for mini diggers, 360 excavators, forward tipping dumpers, rollers, telehandlers, or cat and genny use, your public liability insurance certificate, first aid or SSSTS/SMSTS if you supervise, and photos of completed works — trench runs, slabs poured, drainage pulled in, or driveways dug to base. Clients can then review your tickets, insurance, and past work before shortlisting you.

Groundworks on Grafter cover the full below-ground build sequence — dig and muck-away for foundations, strip footings and trench fill, foul and surface water drainage, soakaways and manholes, oversite concrete and slabs, service trenches and ducting for utilities, and sub-base preparation for driveways, patios, and hard landscaping. If you hold plant tickets, you can also pick up carded plant operator roles on commercial sites.

A groundworks agency typically takes a daily margin off your rate, controls which clients you go to, and can pull you off a job at short notice. Grafter is a direct-hire platform — you keep 100% of what you agree with the client, own the client relationship, and choose the jobs you apply to. There is no commission taken from your pay.

Basic PPE — hard hat, hi-vis, steel-toe boots, gloves, safety glasses, ear defenders — is expected on every job. You will usually bring hand tools (shovels, picks, levels, tamps, string lines) and a tape. Plant like mini diggers, dumpers, rollers, and telehandlers is normally either supplied by the client or hired to the site, though some jobs ask for an owner-operator with their own machine. Each job post makes clear whether plant is included.

Yes. You set your own availability, your travel radius, and which jobs you apply for. Take a single dig day, a week on a drainage run, or sign on for a multi-month foundations package — Grafter has no minimum hours and no exclusivity, so you can work on Grafter alongside any other agencies or clients you already have.

After each paid groundworks job, the client can leave you a review — typically covering quality of the dig, timekeeping, how tidy the site was, and whether levels and setting-out were right. Those reviews stay on your profile across every future job. Groundworks is heavy work where reputation matters; a growing review history is what moves you up the shortlist when clients post a new job in your area.

The groundworkers who win the most jobs tend to have a complete profile, every plant ticket uploaded and in-date, a short bio that lists the work you actually do (drainage, strip footings, slabs, driveways, service runs), insurance on file, and a strong gallery of past digs and pours. Replying to enquiries within the hour also makes a real difference — clients posting groundworks jobs usually need to pin down a start date quickly and will often go with the first applicant who comes back with a clear answer.