Digital Site Inductions and QR Sign-In: What a UK Building Site Needs

Most small sites already do inductions. The trouble is where the record ends up: in a folder in the cabin, half filled in, with nobody in the office able to say who has not done one. The visitor book sits next to it, and the delivery driver walked straight past it.

This is practical guidance from a software company, not legal advice. For the wider picture, see our guide to construction site safety in the UK.

What Is a Site Induction For?

A site induction tells somebody what they need to know about this particular site before they start work on it, and it gives you what you need to know about them. Under CDM 2015 the principal contractor has a duty to make sure a suitable site induction is provided. On a job with only one contractor, that contractor is responsible for telling their people about the site.

A normal induction covers:

• Site rules and hours: working hours, where to park, where to sign in, who is in charge.
• Welfare: where the toilets, the canteen and the drying room are.
• Emergencies: the assembly point, who the first aiders are and where the first aid kit is kept.
• PPE: what has to be worn on this site, and where.
• Current hazards: open excavations, overhead work, plant movements, anything that has changed this week.
• The RAMS to read: the risk assessments and method statements for the work that person is about to do.

Then it collects from the person: a phone number, who they work for, an emergency contact, the skills card they hold with its number and expiry date, and the qualifications that matter for their work, such as SSSTS, IPAF or PASMA. It ends with a signature saying they have read both.

Who Needs a Site Induction?

Everybody who works on the site, before they start. That means your own new starters and every subbie’s operative, including the one who is only there for a day. A subbie inducted on your last job still needs one for this job, because the hazards and the RAMS are different.

Visitors are a different case. The client walking round, building control and a delivery driver are not there to do construction work, and somebody is usually with them. What a visitor needs is proportionate to that: where to report, the assembly point, what PPE to wear, who is hosting them. So a site runs two things side by side: a full induction for the people working there and a visitor register for everybody else.

What Record Should You Keep?

You want to be able to answer four questions without going to the cabin:

1. Has this person been inducted on this site, and when did they sign?
2. Who checked it?
3. Who do we ring if something happens to them?
4. Who is on site right now?

The first two matter when somebody asks you to show that an induction happened. The third matters on the worst day of the job, when the form is locked in the cabin. The fourth is the roll call at the assembly point, and it has to include the building control officer who arrived twenty minutes ago.

Paper struggles with all four. Forms are half filled in, an induction can be altered or backdated without anybody knowing, and there is no list of the people who have not done one, because a missing form does not show up anywhere. How long to keep the records depends on your own circumstances, so ask your health and safety adviser instead of taking a number from a blog.

How Does QR Code Sign-In Work on a Construction Site?

A QR code is a web address printed as a pattern. You fix a poster at the gate or on the cabin door, somebody points their phone camera at it, and the phone opens a page. For a member of the crew, that page checks them in to the site. For a visitor, it shows the site’s rules for visitors and a short form to sign in, and they scan the same poster again to sign out when they leave.

It puts the register where people walk past, on the phone they already carry. It also has limits worth knowing before you rely on it:

• It only records people who scan it. A poster does not stop anybody walking through the gate. Somebody still has to make signing in the habit on your site.
• A code can be photographed. A picture of the poster works from anywhere, so a scan on its own does not prove the person was at the gate. Ask what any system records about where a check-in was made, and whether a poster can be withdrawn.
• Visitors forget to sign out. A register full of people who left hours ago is no use at the assembly point, so ask what happens to a visit nobody closed.
• The visitor’s phone needs signal. The page has to load. At a gate with no coverage, somebody on your team needs another way to sign the visitor in.

What to Watch For With a Digital Induction

No signal. Plenty of cabins have no bars. The form should save on the phone and send itself when signal comes back, which we cover in our guide to offline construction apps.

People without the app. Your regular crew will have it. A new starter turning up on Monday will not, so check how they get from the gate to a completed induction, and who decides whether they are let on to the project.

Privacy. An induction holds the person’s phone number and their emergency contact’s. The whole team should not be able to read that. Check who can see an induction and how long visitors’ details are kept.

Whether a signed record can be edited. If anybody can change an induction after it is signed, it proves very little.

How BuildersAI Does It

BuildersAI is the all-in-one site management app for UK builders. Inductions and the visitor register sit in the same app as the drawings, the tasks and the RAMS.

• ✓ Signed on the person’s own phone. An admin writes the site note and ticks the approved RAMS to read, or attaches the company’s own induction document as a PDF for everybody to read before they sign. Each admin and member of the job then fills in their contact details, emergency contact, skills card and qualifications, and signs with a finger. It works with no signal and is sent when signal returns. Somebody who only follows a job, such as a client or an architect, is not asked for one.
• ✓ Countersigned by the site manager. The site manager is notified, checks the details and countersigns, or sends it back with a reason. Once an induction is sent, what the person wrote and their signature cannot be changed.
• ✓ You can see who has not done theirs. The Inductions page lists everybody on the site, not only the people who have done it, and flags a skills card that has expired. Only the person and the project’s admins can see an induction.
• ✓ A site poster for the gate. An admin prints a poster with a QR code. The crew scan it to check in. A new starter can scan it, create an account and ask to join, and they see nothing of the job until an admin lets them in.
• ✓ Visitors sign themselves in with no app. They scan the poster, read your note and the PPE to wear, give their name and why they came, and sign in. They scan again on the same phone to sign out. A visitor who leaves without signing out is closed at the end of the site’s day and marked “Did not sign out”.

Checking in is always a deliberate tap by the person themselves. It records how far from the site the check-in was made, not where that person is, and nothing happens in the background. If a poster gets out, an admin withdraws it and it signs nobody new in.

Visitors’ names, companies and phone numbers are removed after 90 days by default, while the record that the visit happened is kept. If there is no signal at the gate, anybody on the job can sign a visitor in from the app, which works offline. The steps are in the Help Centre under site inductions and the visitor register, and the visitor register, site inductions and site poster pages covers the roll call.

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