How to induct a subcontractor onto your site

A subbie you have never met turns up at seven, ready to start. You have about four minutes before he wants to get on with it, and somewhere in those four minutes you are supposed to make him aware of every hazard on your site and prove afterwards that you did.

Here is how to do that properly, and what to do about the fact that tomorrow he might send someone else.

First, the bit people get wrong about the law

Whether a formal site-specific induction is compulsory depends on where you are and what you are building.

WorkSafe Queensland's position is that "a person must have a site-specific induction before starting construction work (other than housing construction work)", and that site-specific induction "is not compulsory for workplaces where housing construction work is being carried out."

Plenty of residential builders stop reading there. That is a mistake, for two reasons.

The first is that the exemption is about the formal induction requirement, not about your duty to the person. The obligation to provide information, training and instruction covering the nature of the work, the risks and the control measures does not disappear. WorkSafe Queensland says as much: where an induction is not given, the contents of the safety plan still need to be communicated effectively. You are going to have that conversation either way. An induction is just the version that leaves a record.

The second is that "no record" is a bad place to stand if something happens. The conversation you definitely had, but cannot evidence, is worth very little afterwards.

If you build in Victoria, none of the above applies to you. Victoria never adopted the harmonised WHS laws. Its Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 contain an express site-specific training regulation: an employer must ensure that a person it employs to perform construction work is provided with occupational health and safety training relating to the particular workplace where the work will be performed. There is no housing exemption. In Victoria this is a regulation, full stop.

Rules differ between states and territories, so check your own regulator. The practical advice below does not change either way.

What it costs when the induction is the missing piece

In August 2025 a heating and cooling company was fined $85,000 plus costs in the Moorabbin Magistrates' Court after a first-year apprentice fell through a three-metre void in a double-storey townhouse under construction.

The detail worth sitting with: the company had prepared a safe work method statement, and it did require harnesses. The charge was failing to ensure the work was performed in accordance with it. The apprentice had never received the SWMS induction, and was working centimetres from a live edge without a harness.

The paperwork existed. The conversation never happened. That gap is what an induction closes.

Do it walking, not at the ute

The single biggest improvement you can make to an induction is to stop doing it standing still.

A form filled in on a clipboard at the front of the ute is a form-filling exercise, and everyone involved knows it. The same fifteen items, delivered while walking the site and pointing at the actual things, is the version people remember at three in the afternoon when they are tired.

Point at the trench. The unguarded edge. The switchboard. The stack of material that is not as stable as it looks. Where the first aid kit is. Where everyone meets if it all goes wrong.

What to cover

Work through these, and tick them as you go:

• What they are here to do and who they report to
• Site layout, access, parking, and where not to drive
• Site rules and working hours
• The hazards on this site specifically, not hazards in general
• Any high risk work happening around them, and any SWMS that applies
• Exclusion zones and no-go areas
• PPE required here
• Amenities: toilets, water, where to have a break
• First aid kit location, and who the first aider is
• Emergency procedure and the assembly point
• How to report an incident or a near miss
• How to raise a safety concern, and that they can stop work
• Housekeeping and waste
• Neighbours, noise, and where your boundary actually is
• Sign in and sign out arrangements

Then ask the one question that is not on any form: is there anything about your work that creates a risk for anyone else on site today?

That question is the whole reason to do this in person. It is how you find out that they are cutting all afternoon, or that a scissor lift is arriving at eleven, or that they need the power off for two hours. None of that is on your list, because you did not know about it.

What to write down

Name, company, trade, mobile, white card number, emergency contact name and number. What you covered. Both signatures, theirs and yours.

The white card number is worth the extra ten seconds. It converts "he told me he had one" into a record that you asked and he gave you a number.

The emergency contact is the field nobody thinks about until the one afternoon it is the only field that matters.

WorkSafe Queensland advises principal contractors to keep a record of the people inducted and the date it was given. Even where you are not strictly required to, keep it. It costs nothing and it is the only proof you will have.

The problem nobody warns you about

You induct the subbie. Tomorrow he sends his apprentice. Next week he sends a mate to finish off.

An induction is per person, not per company. The bloke who turns up on Thursday has not been inducted just because his boss was on Tuesday, and if he walks into the same trench you pointed at on Tuesday, the fact that you inducted somebody else does not help anyone.

Two ways to handle it:

Make it self-serve. If inducting someone requires you to be on site with a clipboard, it will not happen when you are at another job. If a new person can induct themselves at the gate before they start, it happens every time.

Check the register before anyone starts. Which is only realistic if the register is somewhere you can see it from another site, rather than in a folder in the shed.

How this works in Foreman

Foreman's site inductions are built around exactly that problem. You put a QR code at the gate. Anyone new scans it with their own phone, enters their details including white card number and emergency contact, reads your site rules, and signs on screen. No app to download and no account to create, which matters because the alternative is a bloke standing at a gate at 7am refusing to install something on his phone.

Every induction lands in a register for that project, with the date and the signature, and you can check it from anywhere. Inductions are unlimited even on the free plan.

If you would rather run it on paper, the free site induction record has the same fields and the same tick list.