Specialist mobilisation
Visas for shutdown and turnaround crews
Overseas specialists brought in for a plant shutdown or turnaround almost always come in on a Subclass 400 Temporary Work (Short Stay Specialist) visa. It covers specialised, non-ongoing work of up to three months with no sponsorship obligation on the employer.
Resource Visa prepares these applications for Australian resources employers, lodging within 48 hours of a complete file. We act for the employer, never the individual applicant.
Late visas
Why shutdowns create a visa problem late
A shutdown is planned twelve to eighteen months out. The visa problem never is.
The date gets locked early, but the scope firms up late. An inspection report comes back worse than expected, a vendor confirms the only certified technician for that equipment is in Germany, or a contractor’s crew list changes three weeks before mobilisation.
By the time anyone is thinking about visas, the window is four to eight weeks away and the date cannot move. Downstream customers, shipping schedules and the rest of the maintenance plan are all built around it.
That is the position most of our shutdown clients are in when they first call. It is workable. It is considerably more workable at eight weeks than at two.
The right visa
Which visa applies to shutdown work
For a defined maintenance window with an end date, the Subclass 400 is almost always the instrument.
- Covers up to three months, tied to a defined piece of work
- No sponsorship, nomination or training obligation on your business
- No formal Labour Market Testing requirement
- Works for a single specialist or an entire crew
- Suits repeat annual shutdowns under a standing arrangement
The 400 is not the right answer if the role is ongoing, or if the work is not genuinely specialised. Both are covered below.
Lead time
How far ahead to start
Work backwards from the day the crew needs to be on site, not from the shutdown start date. Those are rarely the same day, and induction, medicals and travel sit in between.
Departmental processing time sits outside anyone’s control, which is why the table is about when we can lodge, not when a decision arrives.
| Weeks before mobilisation | What should be happening |
|---|---|
| 8+ | Crew list drafted, nationalities known, scope defined. Ideal. |
| 6-8 | Triage call, document request issued, business case in preparation |
| 4-6 | Workable. Documents need to come back quickly. |
| 2-4 | Tight. Achievable for a small crew with complete documents. Call the same day. |
| Under 2 | Call anyway. We will give you an honest read within the call rather than a maybe. |
The evidence
What the application has to prove
Four things, with evidence rather than assertion.
The work is genuinely specialised
Equipment make and model, certification or OEM authorisation required, and why a general tradesperson cannot do it.
The work is genuinely non-ongoing
The shutdown has a start and an end. Show them: the maintenance schedule, the work pack, the contract.
The skill was not readily available locally
What sourcing was attempted, and what it returned.
The commercial consequence of not doing it
This is the section almost nobody else writes, and it is where our principal’s background does the work. Cost of outage per day, contract penalties at stake, production impact quantified. An application that says the work is urgent is weaker than one that shows what a day of delay costs.
Contractors
When the crew comes through a contractor
On most shutdowns the specialist is not employed by the site operator. They are engaged through an EPC contractor, a labour-hire firm, or the OEM’s own service division.
This is normal and it is workable, but it changes how the application is framed. The relationship between the worker, the contractor and the site operator has to be set out clearly and consistently across every document. Inconsistency here is one of the more common causes of a request for further information, and late in a shutdown window that is expensive.
Moving dates
When the date moves
Shutdown dates move. Tell us as soon as you know.
Handled early, a moved date is administrative. Discovered late, it can undermine the business case the application was built on. The dates form part of the evidence that the work is non-ongoing and time-bound, so they need to match reality.
If the window slips by a few days, usually nothing needs to happen. If it slips by weeks, or the scope changes materially, we will tell you whether the application still stands or needs to be withdrawn and relodged.
The process
How a mobilisation runs
Same business day
Triage call
The work, the site, the dates, the fit, and an honest read on whether the 400 is the right instrument.
Within 24 hours
One document request
A single consolidated list, not a drip-feed. The one variable nobody controls is how fast your documents reach us, which is why we ask for everything once, on day one.
Within 48 hours of a complete file
Lodged
Business case assembled and evidenced, your review, then lodgement. A commitment about how fast we work, not about how the Department decides, which no adviser controls.
Ongoing
Standing arrangements
For OEM service divisions and shutdown contractors that mobilise repeatedly: preferred-supplier arrangements, batch mobilisations against your shutdown calendar, one nominated contact.
When the 400 is the wrong instrument for a shutdown
If you are bringing the same specialist back for every shutdown and they are effectively part of your maintenance workforce, that pattern reads as ongoing employment rather than short-stay specialist work. That is particularly true since the September 2024 tightening, where cumulative stay beyond three months in any twelve-month period attracts closer review.
If the work is scaffolding, general labour or trades an Australian could reasonably do, it is not a specialised-skills case regardless of how short the window is.
In both situations we will tell you at the triage call and map the alternative, which is usually the 482 for the first and local sourcing for the second.
Who you are dealing with
Migration advice with a CFO's signature
Resource Visa is led by Matthew Coleman, a Registered Migration Agent who spent two decades in senior finance roles across the resources sector before practising migration. The commercial context behind a mobilisation is not something that has to be explained.
- Registered Migration Agent, MARN 1686595
- CPA (Australia) and CIMA (UK), dual-qualified
- 20+ years in corporate finance, including group CFO roles
- Mining, oil and gas, energy infrastructure and marine services
- Principal-led. You deal with the person doing the work.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
In most cases the Subclass 400 Temporary Work (Short Stay Specialist) visa, which covers specialised, non-ongoing work of up to three months with no sponsorship obligation on the employer. Whether it fits depends on how specialised the work genuinely is and whether the role is truly time-bound.
Six to eight weeks before the crew needs to be on site is comfortable. Four to six is workable. Under four weeks is tight but has been done. The practical constraint is usually how fast documents come back from the crew, not the preparation itself.
Not for the Subclass 400. It carries no sponsorship, nomination or training obligation, which is the main reason it suits shutdown work.
Each person needs their own visa application, but the underlying business case is shared and the process runs as a batch. For contractors who mobilise repeatedly, we run batch mobilisations against a shutdown calendar under a standing arrangement.
Yes, and it is the norm. The application has to set out the relationship between the worker, the contractor and the site operator clearly and consistently. Getting that framing wrong is a common cause of delay.
Tell us immediately. A small slip usually needs no action. A material change to dates or scope may mean withdrawing and relodging, because the dates form part of the evidence that the work is non-ongoing.
Yes. Refining and petrochemical operations tend to say turnaround or TAR; mining and LNG say shutdown or shut; power generation says outage. The visa treatment is identical, what matters is that the work is specialised and time-bound, not what it is called.
Keep reading
Related pages
Subclass 400 Rapid Mobilisation
The Subclass 400 covers specialised, non-ongoing work up to three months with no sponsorship obligation. Decision-ready applications lodged within 48 hours of a complete file.
Who Must Be the Sponsor?
When a specialist is engaged through an EPC or labour-hire contractor, who sponsors them? How the contractual chain changes the visa, and the mistakes that cause delay.
Mobilisation timeline planner
Work backwards from your mobilisation date. What has to happen when, what runs in parallel, and what we can and can’t commit to.
Planning a shutdown? Book a consultation.
Tell us the window, the scope and the crew. We will give you an honest read on the timeline in the first call.
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm AWST