Turned away at the gate
The new commercial job starts on Monday. On Monday morning, at the site gate, one of your electricians is told his card has expired. He can't go on site. The other two start without him, the programme slips, and the office spends the morning trying to sort a renewal that should have been booked months ago.
Later that week, the main contractor asks for copies of everyone's qualifications for their records. They are in a folder, some out of date, some missing.
Why expiries sneak up on you
Each electrician holds a different mix: an industry site card, their wiring regulations qualification, inspection and testing qualifications, first aid, working at height, asbestos awareness, maybe specific manufacturer training. Each has its own renewal cycle. The records are scanned into a folder when someone joins and rarely updated.
The person best placed to notice an expiry is the electrician, who is thinking about the job, not his card.
| Record | Common problem |
|---|---|
| Site card | Expires, noticed at the gate |
| Regulations qualification | Newer edition taken, record not updated |
| Inspection and testing | Copy missing from the file |
| Short courses | Certificates on personal phones |
| Apprentice progress | Tracked by the college, not by you |
Growing firms feel it most. When you had four electricians, the owner knew everyone's cards by heart. With a dozen, plus apprentices and a few regular subcontractors, nobody holds the whole picture. New starters bring their certificates on their phone and forward them once, and after that the records are never looked at until a main contractor asks.
What a lapsed card costs
A person who can't go on site is a day of wages without a day of work, and a programme that slips. Main contractors judge you on how quickly you can produce competence evidence. Your competent person scheme will want to see that your people are qualified for the work they do. And last-minute renewals cost more and cause more stress.
Which cards and qualifications each role needs is for you and your scheme to decide. The register just keeps track.
It also affects planning. If the office doesn't know that an inspection qualification is held by only one person, the business depends on that person being available for every periodic inspection, and nobody notices the risk until they are off sick.
The team register we build
- Person records: each electrician has a record with every card, qualification and training certificate, with a photo or scan and its expiry date.
- Easy upload: electricians photograph new cards and certificates on their phone. The details are read and checked by the office before they are accepted.
- Expiry warnings: the person and the office get reminders well before expiry, at intervals you set, with a note of how to renew.
- Role requirements: you set what each role must hold. Gaps show on a team view.
- Site packs: for a new job, the office selects the team and downloads a competence pack with everyone's current documents, ready for the main contractor.
- Planning check: when someone is allocated to a job, the system warns if a required card will expire before the job ends.
We set it up by importing whatever records you already hold, then asking each electrician to check and complete their own record on their phone. Gaps become obvious straight away, which is often the most useful moment of the whole project.
Nobody stuck at the gate
Renewals are booked with time to spare. Site packs take minutes. The owner can see gaps across the team at a glance, and new starters' records are complete from day one.
It also helps with tendering. Main contractors increasingly want competence evidence with the tender, and being able to include current records for the proposed team is a small advantage over firms that promise to send them later.
Are your records like this?
- Qualifications are scanned into a folder when people join.
- Someone has been turned away from site with an expired card.
- Producing competence evidence for a main contractor takes hours.
- You're not sure who holds which inspection and testing qualification.
- Renewals are booked at the last minute.