Working hours in construction: what applies on site and what you have to record

The limits on site

Unlike hospitality or care, construction has no exceptions of its own in the Working Hours Act. The general limits apply. The framework collective agreement for the construction industry sets its own weekly hours and working time accounts; if it applies to your business, it takes precedence within these limits.

Long days in summer, short ones in winter

Ten-hour days are allowed as long as the average over six calendar months or 24 weeks stays at eight hours per working day. Working days are Monday to Saturday. A week of five ten-hour days is therefore permitted if it is balanced out in quieter weeks.

This very averaging is where timesheets fail: anyone who does not keep a running count of summer overtime cannot prove in winter that the average has been met. Anything beyond eight hours per working day has to be recorded and kept for two years under section 16(2) ArbZG anyway.

The drive to the site: when it is working time

The way from home to work is not working time. It is different when the working day starts at the business: anyone who has to go to the yard in the morning to collect material, tools or the crew is working from there, and according to the case law of the Federal Labour Court the drive to the site counts as working time. The same applies to the way between two sites on the same day.

A second exception concerns employees without a fixed or habitual place of work. Anyone who drives from home to changing sites every day is working from departure according to the Court of Justice of the European Union (judgment of 10 September 2015, C-266/14). Anyone who drives to the same site for weeks, by contrast, has a habitual place of work there, and the direct drive to it remains the commute.

For the records this means: the start is the time at the yard, or departure for changing sites without a habitual place of work, not arrival on site. Anyone who only notes the time on site records too little in these cases, and the ten-hour limit is measured against the wrong figure.

Saturday yes, Sunday no

Saturday is a working day, and work on it is normally permitted under the Working Hours Act. Sunday is not: construction is not on the list of exceptions in section 10 ArbZG. Sunday work on a site is therefore reserved for narrow exceptional cases, an emergency or extraordinary case under section 14 ArbZG or a permit from the supervisory authority under section 13(3) ArbZG.

Records and ID under section 2a SchwarzArbG

Construction is the first entry in the list in section 2a SchwarzArbG. Two duties follow for every business, not only large ones. Whether a trade business belongs to it depends on whether it provides construction work; painting, electrical or plumbing businesses often do.

The record-keeping duty has two exemptions, both in section 1 of the Minimum Wage Documentation Ordinance. It does not apply to employees whose regular monthly pay exceeds 4,461 euros gross, or 2,974 euros if the employer has demonstrably paid that amount for the last twelve full months. And it does not apply to spouses, registered partners, children and parents of the employer who work in the business. You have to be able to prove with documents that an exemption applies.

If an industry minimum wage under the Posted Workers Act applies to your trade, the same record-keeping duty additionally follows from section 19 AEntG.

1. Inform every person in writing that they must carry their ID card or passport on site, and keep the notice.
2. Record the start, end and duration of daily working time by the end of the seventh calendar day at the latest (section 17(1) MiLoG).
3. Keep the records available in German, at the place of work too if customs asks, which means on site (section 17(2) MiLoG).
4. Keep the records for two years. This also applies to agency workers a staffing agency places with you: then you record as the hirer.

Construction in the customs inspection statistics

In 2025 the Financial Monitoring Unit for Illicit Employment checked 5,514 employers in construction and 64,761 persons. Only restaurants and accommodation had more employer checks. According to customs, around 60 percent of the damage found in 2025 is attributed to construction, along with more than 10,000 criminal proceedings and just under 7,900 administrative offence proceedings opened in the industry.

In March 2026, around 3,200 customs officers visited construction sites during a priority check. The minimum wage they ask about has been 13.90 euros per hour since 1 January 2026.

Time tracking for the crew

In MetronHR your people book start, end and break on their phone, plus the site. Without reception the app stores locally and transfers once there is a connection again. The foreman can enter times for the crew, and the time is in the system to the minute, without rounding.

In the office you filter by period, site or person and download the hours as Excel or CSV, for the tax adviser, a customs enquiry or the job costing. If the tax adviser uses DATEV for payroll, they get the payroll file for it.