All notes

The contractor is responsible for people it did not hire, using information held by companies with no particular reason to provide it accurately.

• Who Is Actually on Site

  The question a site must answer at any moment, about people it did not hire and does not pay.

• The Question to Ask First

  One question that sorts most decisions in this subject, and what each answer means.

Everything depends on knowing who came through and who went back out. The second half is where every method fails.

• The Gate

  Turnstiles, readers and sign-in books. What each actually delivers, and the single failure that defeats all of them.

• The Roll Call

  The reason the register exists, the one use where being wrong has consequences that are not commercial, and what it requires of everything upstream.

• The Site Diary and the Daily Record

  The oldest record on a construction site, what it is used for years later, and why the access data should feed it rather than replace it.

• Running the Gate

  The half hour at shift start that determines whether the whole arrangement is workable, and the decisions the gateman should not be making.

Checking people are qualified without becoming a certification body, and the expiry problem that defeats most sites.

• Cards, Tickets and Competence

  Checking that people are qualified for the work, without becoming a certification body, and the expiry problem that defeats most sites.

• Induction

  The first contact between the site and a person it did not hire. What it has to achieve, why it expires, and the version that is a formality.

• Plant, Permits and Authorisation to Work

  Access to the site is one question. Authorisation for a specific activity is another, and conflating them produces a gate that either blocks everybody or verifies nothing.

Information about people flows up a chain designed to move money down it, and every interface is a place it can stop.

• The Subcontract Chain

  Information about people flows up a chain that was designed to move money down it. What to require, from whom, and what happens at the tier where nobody is looking.

• Agency and Self-Employed Labour

  A large part of the construction workforce is supplied rather than employed. Who verifies what, and the assumption that all three parties make.

• What to Put in the Subcontract

  The obligations that make everything else possible, written before the work starts, because none of them can be imposed afterwards.

• Payment Down the Chain

  Late payment two tiers away shows up on site as people not arriving. Why a workforce problem is frequently a commercial one, and what the register reveals first.

Gate records are weaker evidence than they are sold as, and the deterrent is most of the value.

• Hours, Invoices and What Connects Them

  The commercial case for site access data, the reconciliation almost nobody runs, and why gate records are weaker evidence than people assume.

• Certified Payroll and Prevailing Wage

  Where public funding attaches wage obligations to a project, the records become a statutory format rather than a management choice.

• Client Requirements and Audits

  Clients increasingly specify how the workforce is tracked, and audit whether it was. What they ask for, and what is worth agreeing at tender rather than discovering later.

The register sees something no employer can: total hours across every company on site.

• Long Hours and Fatigue

  Access records reveal how long people are actually on site, which on many projects is longer than anybody intended and longer than the risk assessments assume.

• After an Incident

  What the records have to answer when something happens, and the questions an investigation asks that nobody prepares for.

• Welfare and What the Register Reveals

  Headcount determines what facilities a site must provide, and the register is the only honest source for it — which is why the number is frequently understated.

• Toolbox Talks and Keeping People Informed

  Information has to reach a workforce that changes weekly and belongs to other companies. What actually arrives, and what the register says about who was missed.

• People Who Are Not Working There

  Neighbours, passers-by, delivery drivers and trespassers are affected by the site and appear in none of its workforce records. What the boundary has to do.

Almost every failure here is a process decision rather than a technology problem, which is why replacing the system fixes none of them.

• Small Sites and Refurbishment Work

  A house extension, an office fit-out, a shop refit. The same obligations with none of the infrastructure, and what is actually proportionate.

• Choosing a System

  The questions that separate construction access products, which are mostly about the subcontract chain rather than about the hardware.

• Putting It In

  A gate system arrives mid-project or at mobilisation, and the difference between those two decides how much of the difficulty is avoidable.

• How This Goes Wrong

  The recurring failures on construction sites, each findable in a morning, each with a specific correction.

• Churn

  Construction workforces change constantly, which is the condition every record in this collection has to survive. What the register shows about it and what to do.

• Programme Pressure

  Every control in this collection is tested by the same force: a date that did not move when the work did. What that does, and where it shows up first.

• More Than One Site

  Contractors run several projects with overlapping workforces and subcontractors. What can be shared, what cannot, and where the assumptions go wrong.

• Where to Start

  A first month that establishes what the site actually knows, in an order that finds the important gaps before any purchase.

• Who Owns the Register

  The recurring work a site workforce system generates, what decays first without it, and why naming one person prevents most of the failures in this collection.

• Mobilisation

  The weeks before anybody is on site, when everything in this collection is cheap to arrange and after which all of it becomes a change programme.

• Phase Changes

  A site becomes a different place several times during a project, and every record built for the previous version quietly stops describing it.

• Recovering a Site That Has Lost Control of Its Register

  A running project where nobody trusts the numbers, enrolment has stalled and exceptions have become the process. A quarter to fix it, without new hardware.

• Reading a Supplier's Claims

  The recurring phrases in this market, what each usually means, and the question that makes it checkable before the contract is signed.

• The First Ninety Days

  What to watch after a new arrangement starts, when problems are cheap to fix and everybody is deciding whether it is real.

• The Thing You Are Spending

  Every control here depends on cooperation from people who work for somebody else and gain nothing from complying. What buys it, what spends it, and how the loss shows.

A site holds sensitive data about hundreds of people it does not employ, and the responsibility does not divide the way everybody assumes.

• The Data a Site Holds About Other People's Staff

  Identity documents, biometrics, competence records and movement data about people the site does not employ. What that obliges, and who is responsible.

• What Survives the Project

  Questions arrive years after completion, when the site is gone, the system is switched off and the team has dispersed. What to keep and who keeps it.

• Right to Work

  A check that falls on the contractor regardless of who engaged the person, carries penalties that are not commercial, and is the one most often assumed to have been done by somebody else.

• Where the Duties Sit

  Several companies, one site, and a set of overlapping obligations that do not divide neatly. Who is responsible for what, and the assumptions that leave gaps.

Most of them substitute a mechanism for a decision, because the mechanism is purchasable and the decision is not.

• What Not to Do

  Practices that appear on sites with good intentions and produce a register that is confidently wrong or a workforce that works around it.

The end state as a checklist, the five things that cost nothing, and what none of this can fix.

• What a Working Arrangement Looks Like

  A description of the end state, assembled from everything here, as a checklist to measure a proposal or an existing site against.

• What the System Cannot Tell You

  Questions routinely asked of site access data that it cannot answer, and where the real answer is.

• Glossary

  Terms used across these notes, defined once, including several the industry and its suppliers use to mean different things.

• Routes Through These Notes

  Five common situations and which notes answer each, for readers who arrived with a problem rather than an interest in the subject.

• The Numbers Worth Watching

  Seven measures that describe whether the arrangement works, and the ones that mostly describe the project rather than its management.

• What the Hardware Cannot Do

  Readers, turnstiles and biometrics have specific limits that no configuration removes, and the limits determine what the arrangement around them has to cover.

• What This Cannot Fix

  Problems brought to a workforce tracking system that no arrangement of gates and records resolves, and what does.

• The Five Things That Cost Nothing

  The arrangements that deliver most of the protection without a purchase order, and why each is skipped in favour of hardware.

• Where to Start Reading

  Six situations and the route through these notes that suits each, plus the three to read if you only have time for three.