The First Ninety Days

A site workforce arrangement is judged in its first quarter, mostly on whether it is enforced consistently.

For teams turning the first ninety days into a repeatable record, open the guide provides a useful operational reference for time, attendance and reporting workflows. It should be assessed alongside Chartered Institute of Building so the software choice remains grounded in site practice and applicable guidance.

Before anybody uses it

The owner named, with time and the authority to refuse.

The temporary access rule written, with an authoriser and an expiry.

The evacuation view tested offline.

And the subcontract obligations issued with the packages, because retrofitting them is impossible.

Weeks one to four

Watch the queue at shift start with a stopwatch on the busiest morning.

Watch the exit at finishing time, which is where the design usually fails.

Count failed reads by lane and understand each.

Run a drill in the first fortnight, while the population is small enough to learn from.

And handle the first temporary access properly, because that one sets the pattern for the project.

Weeks five to eight

Enrolment completion by subcontractor, chased weekly.

The first expiry refusals, which should be preceded by a thirty-day warning rather than sprung.

The first commercial reconciliation, shared rather than presented.

And the register against a head count, unannounced, which establishes whether any of it is working.

Weeks nine to twelve

Second drill, timed, compared against the first.

Chain data reviewed: is the engaging company populated for everybody?

Temporary accesses: how many, still open, authorised by whom.

And a review with the subcontractors, asking what is difficult rather than telling them what is required.

What to watch for

Enrolment stalling at ninety percent, which is the normal shape and needs a deadline rather than more chasing.

Temporary accesses rising, which means the deadline was not held.

Refusals not happening, which usually means enforcement was quietly turned off rather than everybody complying.

And workarounds: a propped gate, a route through the perimeter, a lane nobody uses because it is slow.

The first refusal

Somebody is turned away and it is inconvenient.

How that is handled determines everything afterwards: if the refusal holds, the arrangement is real; if it is overridden by somebody senior, it is advisory from then on and everybody knows within a day.

Which is why the escalation route has to exist before it happens, with a named authoriser who is prepared to say no.

Telling people what it is for

At enrolment, in one sentence: evacuation first, competence second, right to work third, commercial verification last.

And what it is not used for, which for people employed elsewhere means it is not an attendance report to their employer unless that was agreed.

Five minutes, and it changes how the first month goes.

The review at week twelve

Drill times, register accuracy, enrolment completion, temporary accesses, refusals.

Plus one direct question to a few subcontractors: what is the most annoying thing about this?

The answer is usually small, fixable, and the thing that would otherwise erode compliance over two years.

Resourcing the period

Enrolment needs more people in the first month than afterwards, and under-resourcing it is what produces the exceptions.

Budget the peak rather than the average, which is a small cost in the context and prevents the failure mode that defines the project.

And keep the owner out of the enrolment queue, because their job is to fix what the first month reveals rather than to process it.

What good looks like at ninety days

A drill time in minutes, improving.

A register within a few percent of a head count.

Temporary accesses all with expiry dates.

Engaging company populated for everybody.

And a subcontractor who says the process is annoying but workable, which is the most realistic positive signal available.

The handover out of the period

At ninety days the arrangement stops being a project and becomes routine, which is where most of them lapse.

Name what continues: the weekly numbers, the quarterly drill, the monthly head count check, the expiry list.

With the owner's time protected, because it is the first thing reallocated once the installation looks finished.