A clipboard in the site office
Before hot work, work at height, confined space entry or work on live systems, your team needs a permit. On paper that means a numbered carbon book in a site office. The engineer fills in the details, finds the authoriser, who may be on another part of the site or on the phone from somewhere else, gets a signature, and pins a copy up near the job.
At the end, the permit should be handed back and closed. Often it is not. The site office ends up with a pile of permits in various states, and nobody can say for certain which are still live. When a client's safety manager asks to see last month's permits, someone goes through a box.
Why paper permits drift
Paper permits rely on people being in the same place at the same time. The requester, the authoriser and the copy on the wall all have to meet. On a large site, across several sites, or with authorisers working remotely, that becomes a wait, and waits invite shortcuts.
Closing is the weak point. Once the work is finished, the permit feels like paperwork, and handing it back is the step most easily forgotten. Open permits pile up, which makes it harder to trust any of them.
There is also no joined-up view. Each book shows its own permits, not the overlaps between them. Two permits that should not be live at once on the same plant can both be issued if nobody looks across the books.
What paper permits cost
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Waiting for an authoriser | Work delayed, or pressure to start early |
| Illegible or incomplete permits | Unclear what was authorised and under what conditions |
| Permits left open | No certainty about what work is live on site |
| No cross-site view | Conflicting permits harder to spot |
| Audit requests | Hours spent gathering and scanning paper |
| Lost permits | Gaps in the record if something goes wrong |
For contractors, the audit question is a commercial one as well. Larger clients increasingly ask how permits are managed, and a box of carbon copies is a harder answer to give than a searchable record.
What we build
We build the system around your existing permit forms and procedures. We do not write your safety rules; we make the ones you have easier to follow and harder to skip.
- Permit types. Each permit type (hot work, height, confined space, electrical isolation, excavation) has its own form, based on your current paper version, with required fields and check lists.
- Request on the phone. The person doing the work starts the permit on their phone at the job, with location, scope, attached method statement and photos of the area.
- Routing to authorisers. The request goes to the right authoriser for that permit type and site. They review and approve on their phone, with any conditions recorded, and can ask for changes.
- Isolations and checks. Isolation points, gas tests and other checks are recorded with who did them and when, and required checks must be completed before the permit becomes live.
- Live permit board. A screen shows every live permit by site and area, with who holds it and when it expires. Overlapping permits on the same asset or area are flagged.
- Close-out. When the work ends, the holder records completion and the area state, the authoriser signs off, and isolations are confirmed removed. Permits that pass their expiry without closing are chased automatically.
- Record and reports. Every permit, change and signature is kept with a time and name, and can be searched and exported for clients and audits.
The app works offline, because plant rooms and basements are exactly where permits are needed, and syncs when a connection returns. A paper fallback procedure stays in place for when a phone is unavailable.
What changes on site
Permits are requested and approved without the authoriser having to walk across the site, so work starts when it is properly authorised rather than when two people manage to meet. The live board shows what is open at a glance, and open permits no longer hide in a pile.
When a client or auditor asks for records, they come from a searchable system with names and times, not from a box. And because each permit type asks for its checks in order, the procedure is followed the same way by everyone.
Does this sound like your sites?
- Permits to work are issued from paper books
- Work waits for an authoriser to be physically present
- Permits are often left open after the job finishes
- You cannot quickly see every live permit across sites
- Clients ask for permit records and gathering them takes hours