The air-con in a block of twelve rooms dropped out at 9pm, two hours before night shift came off. The camp boss rang the one air-conditioning tech who lives in town, got voicemail, and wrote it on the whiteboard in the admin donga. Town ops found out the next morning from a welfare complaint. By then the mess cool-room alarm had gone off twice and nobody could say whether the refrigeration contractor had confirmed.
Resources camps are small towns that cannot shut. Workers coming off a twelve-hour shift need a cool room to sleep in, a hot meal from the mess, clean laundry and working amenities. When a room air-conditioning unit, a cool-room compressor or a generator fails, it is a welfare problem the same night and a production problem by the next shift.
OpsChase puts every camp on one queue: local contractors in calling order per camp and trade, each job followed up until photos and sign-off, and town ops seeing every open job between swings.
From a camp boss phone call to a work order
Whoever finds the fault raises it with a photo and the asset named — camp boss, maintenance coordinator or the village manager on night roster. It becomes a work order against that camp and asset: room-block air conditioning, mess cool-room, generator set, laundry machines, amenities block or water plant.
Add the gate note: induction required, escort needed, permitted hours, drive-in or flight day, and whether the crew needs a room for the night. The regular contractor for that camp and trade gets the job first.
Thin benches: the contractor who can reach the gate
At a city site you can ring five air-conditioning companies. At a remote camp, coverage means the contractor who can actually get through the gate this week. A capital-city office “covering” the region is not attendance, and neither is one ute covering three camps on paper.
Import your local book per camp. Order it by who turns up, not by who signed the agreement.
Town ops and the camp boss see the same job
Camp maintenance usually breaks down at the handover between the camp and town ops. The camp boss knows what failed. Town ops holds the contractor relationships, spend approvals and budget. Between them sit phone calls, texts and an email chain that resets at every swing change.
On one queue the camp boss raises, town ops assigns the trade and contractor, and both see the same status: confirmed, attending, attended, proof attached. When the camp boss flies out, the job does not fly out with them. The incoming boss sees what is open, who confirmed and what is still waiting.
The failures that cost a night’s sleep or a shift
- Room air conditioning. A dead unit in a donga in summer means a worker sleeps badly before the next shift. Route it to heating, ventilation and air conditioning with the block, room number and a photo of the unit or its fault light.
- Mess cool-rooms and freezers. A cool-room alarm puts food stock and meal service at risk. Send it to refrigeration with the temperature reading and the time the alarm started.
- Generators and power. Camps on site power depend on the generator set. Use generators or electrical with the set ID, fault code and fuel note on the job.
- Laundry and amenities. A flooded laundry or a failed hot water unit hits every worker on the swing. Route it to plumbing, with cleaning booked for the reset once the leak is fixed.
- Water, fire and pests. Potable water plant faults go to water treatment, detector faults and extinguisher service to fire protection, and a mess or room block pest call to pest control.
This is camp plant and amenities — rooms, mess, power, laundry and water. It is not room allocation, rostering or flight bookings. Those stay in your camp management system; OpsChase only follows up contractors and proof on the maintenance jobs beside them.
Attend-by times that fit the swing
Every job carries an attend-by time that makes sense for a camp: before night shift sleeps, before the next meal service, before the next swing arrives, or on the contractor’s next drive-in day. Late jobs show against your response targets, so town ops sees which camp will start the next swing with a room block down.
Contractor compliance before the gate
Keep licence, public liability, induction and site-access details on file for each contractor through contractor compliance, so town ops and the camp boss can check them before booking. The gate is the wrong place to find out a crew missed the site induction. Mark which contractors are approved for which camps so the wrong book is not sent to a site with its own access rules.
Proof from that room and that plant room
Town ops, the site client and auditors all ask the same questions after the fact: who attended, when, and what they left behind. Set proof templates per trade — before and after photos for room air conditioning and plumbing, temperature readings for cool-rooms, service reports for generators and fire equipment, and a clean-room photo after a reset. Proof of completion means the answer comes from the job, not from someone’s phone gallery after they have flown out.
Planned servicing on the drive-in days
Generator servicing, filter cleans on room units, cool-room checks, fire equipment inspections, water plant testing and pest treatments all repeat across every camp. Run planned maintenance through scheduling on the same queue as breakdowns, grouped into the days a contractor is already making the trip.
What a multi-camp operator sees on one queue
With every camp on one queue:
- Camp boss calls, texts and whiteboard notes become work orders with photos and the asset named.
- Local contractor books stay in calling order per camp and trade.
- Camp bosses raise; town ops assigns the trade and regular contractor.
- Attend-by times follow shifts, meal services and swing changes.
- Photos, reports and readings are attached to the work order.
OpsChase sits beside your camp management system and contractor agreements, which stay the record for rooms and rosters. OpsChase is the contractor follow-up and proof behind each maintenance job. When you want planned maintenance and assets tracked too, Assets & planned maintenance runs them on the same follow-up. If your current process is a spreadsheet per camp and a shared inbox in town, see how that compares with spreadsheet and email follow-up.
Starting before the next swing
Pick the camp with the most open faults right now. Import the camp, its local contractor book and the trades they cover. Set roles for the camp boss, maintenance coordinator and town ops. Set proof templates for heating and cooling, refrigeration, generators, plumbing and cleaning. Raise the next fault into OpsChase instead of another voicemail, then add the next camp.
Read the resources camps industry page or book a demo with your camp list and contractor books. Check pricing when you are ready to put every camp on one flow.
Workers judge a camp on simple things: a cool room to sleep in, a hot meal and a shower that works. Put every fault and every service on one queue, get the local contractor through the gate on time, and let the next camp boss start the swing knowing exactly what is still open.