15 September 2026 · All Pathways
If you've spent years pouring slabs and setting footings, you might be wondering whether that counts for much when it comes to getting qualified. It's a fair question. A lot of blokes who've done solid, specialised work worry their skills are too narrow to add up to a proper certificate. The short answer: your experience matters, but let's be honest about how it fits — and where it doesn't.
Here's the straight talk. If your whole working life has been concrete slabs and footings — the pour, the finish, the footings for a house or a shed — that work lines up more with concreting than with carpentry. And right now, the two qualifications we can help you with are the Certificate III in Carpentry and the Certificate III in Painting & Decorating.
So if concreting is genuinely all you've done, we'd rather tell you upfront that we're not the right fit for that specific qualification today than have you sign up expecting something we can't deliver.
But — and this is a big but — most people who've poured slabs and footings have done a fair bit more on site than just the concrete. That's where it gets interesting.
Plenty of the work around slabs and footings crosses over into carpentry territory. Think about what you've actually done:
Formwork is a recognised part of carpentry. If you've been building the boxes, setting out the job and reading the plans — not just floating the finish — then a chunk of your experience may line up with units inside the Certificate III in Carpentry.
The honest reality is that slabs and footings alone probably won't cover the whole qualification. Carpentry also asks about things like wall and roof framing, external cladding and other structural work. So the question becomes: what else have you touched over the years?
We can't tell you over a blog post whether you'll get qualified. Nobody honest can. What we can tell you is how it works: you gather evidence of the work you've genuinely done, and the competency decision is made by our partner Registered Training Organisation (RTO). They check your evidence against the requirements of each unit. If it stacks up, it counts. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
Evidence usually looks like:
The wider your on-site experience, the better your chances of covering more units. If you've only ever done the concrete and nothing else, that's worth knowing before you spend a cent.
All Pathways helps you get your experience recognised by working with you to gather and organise the evidence, then handing it to the partner RTO for assessment. We keep the pricing simple and open:
No lock-in, no surprise fees, no fake urgency.
If you've done slabs and footings plus a decent amount of other carpentry — framing, formwork, fit-outs — it's worth a conversation. If concreting is honestly the only thing you've ever done, we'd rather point that out now than take your money for a qualification that isn't the right match.
The first week costs you nothing, so there's no harm in finding out where you stand.
If you reckon there's more to your carpentry experience than just the concrete, have a chat with All Pathways and we'll help you figure out what counts.
See the Certificate III in Carpentry pathway — first week free, then $20/week, cancel anytime.
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