Putting It In

Access control installed at mobilisation is a routine setup task. Installed on a running site with four hundred people, it is a change programme.

For teams turning putting it in into a repeatable record, available here provides a useful operational reference for time, attendance and reporting workflows. It should be assessed alongside Procore's construction resources so the software choice remains grounded in site practice and applicable guidance.

At mobilisation

Set it up before anybody needs to pass through.

Which means the induction process, the subcontractor data route and the register all exist on day one, and everybody who arrives is enrolled as a matter of course.

No backlog, no retrofitting, no exceptions to argue about.

This is the easy case and it requires only that somebody thought about it during the tender rather than after.

On a running site

Several hundred people already present, none enrolled.

Enrol in waves by subcontractor, with a deadline per wave and a stated date after which unenrolled people do not pass.

Announce the date early and hold it, because a deadline that slips once will slip repeatedly and the last wave never completes.

And expect the final ten percent to be the difficult ones: the occasional attenders, the specialist visitors, the person whose card expired two years ago and who has been on site throughout.

The enrolment session

Identity, right-to-work, competence, induction status, photograph, card issued.

Which takes minutes per person and becomes a queue of hours at scale.

Run it away from the gate, in a cabin with seats, rather than in a line at seven in the morning.

And staff it properly for the first fortnight, since an under-resourced enrolment produces the pressure that leads to exceptions.

The exceptions that become permanent

Somebody admitted without enrolment because the crane was waiting.

Which is reasonable once and is a precedent immediately.

Write the temporary access rule before you need it: who authorises, on what evidence, for how long, and what happens at expiry.

And report temporary accesses weekly, because the count going up is the signal that the enrolment has stalled.

Subcontractor resistance

Entering their people into your system is unpaid administration for them.

Which is a real objection and is answered by making it quick and by putting the obligation in the subcontract.

Where a subcontractor genuinely cannot — a small firm with no office — do it for them at enrolment rather than losing a week to an argument about whose job it is.

The first week

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

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

Count failed reads and understand each one.

And run an evacuation drill in the first fortnight, because that is what the system is for and it is the check nobody does until the system has been live for months.

What to measure from day one

Entries without a matching exit, daily.

Temporary accesses granted.

Refusals, by reason.

Enrolment completion by subcontractor.

And the queue time at peak, which if it exceeds a few minutes will produce workarounds regardless of any rule.

The handover to business as usual

A named person who owns the register after the installer leaves.

Who adds and removes people, chases expiries, runs the reports and handles the exceptions.

Without them the register is accurate on the day it was built and degrades from there, which is the same conclusion as every other part of this subject and is the one most often left unassigned.

Telling people what it is for

A turnstile installed without explanation is read as a timesheet, and read that way it invites workarounds.

Say the order plainly: evacuation first, competence second, right to work third, and commercial verification last.

And say what it is not used for — which for people employed by somebody else means it is not reported to their employer as an attendance record unless that was agreed.

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

What the first drill usually finds

A register fifteen minutes stale.

Twenty unmatched entries.

A marshal who was not on site.

And a gang that left at lunchtime and was still counted.

All four are fixable in the first fortnight and expensive to discover in month eight, which is the argument for drilling early rather than once the system has settled.