Free daily pre-start checklist for construction sites
Ten site checks, today's tasks with hazards and controls, anything the crew raised, and a crew sign-on. One page for every morning.
Daily pre-start checklist
PDF, 1 page, A4 · Free · No email required
Running pre-starts on several sites? Foreman's forms let your site managers fill the same checklist in on their phone, with the crew signing on screen, saved against the job. Free on your first job, with every feature and unlimited users on it.
A daily pre-start checklist is the five-minute check a site manager runs before work starts: is the site safe today, what's the work, what could hurt someone, and who's here. This one-page version covers the site checks, today's tasks with their hazards and controls, anything the crew raised, and a crew sign-on.
Free, no email required.
What goes on a pre-start
Site checks. Ten yes, no or N/A questions, in the order you'd walk the site: fencing and signage, access, weather, edge protection and ladders, plant and tool tags, services, SWMS, permits, inductions, first aid. A "no" is the point of the exercise. It means something gets fixed before anyone starts.
Today's work. Each task, who's doing it, what could go wrong and what you agreed to do about it. Write it for this site, today. "Working at heights" is a topic. "Josh on the first-floor slab edge, handrail goes up before 8 am" is a pre-start.
Raised by the crew. Your crew see things you don't. Write down what they mention, put a name and a date against it, and close it out. That's what makes them mention the next one.
Crew sign-on. Everyone at the pre-start signs. It's your record that they heard today's plan, including the SWMS for any high risk work.
Pre-start or toolbox talk?
They overlap, and plenty of sites run them together. A pre-start happens every day before work and is about today: this site, these tasks, this weather. A toolbox talk is usually weekly and goes deeper on one topic. If you run both, keep the pre-start short and use the toolbox talk template for the longer conversation.
What people get wrong
Ticking without looking. A pre-start where every box is ticked by 6:45 am from the ute wasn't a pre-start. Walk the site first, then fill it in.
The same tasks every day. If today's work section is copied from yesterday, nobody read it. Three real lines beat ten stale ones.
Losing them. A pre-start is evidence when something goes wrong, or when an ISO or WorkSafe auditor asks how you check the site each day. A stack of paper in the site shed is hard to find six months later.
Doing it without the clipboard
Foreman's forms are built for exactly this. Build the pre-start once with the same headings: yes and no questions for the site checks, a checklist, a photo field for anything you find, and signature fields for the crew. You can set the date field so it can't be backdated, and make the form available to site managers and admins only, so the pre-start stays the site manager's job.
For the full set-up, see how to run a daily pre-start. Already have a pre-start on paper or as a PDF? Connect Claude or ChatGPT to Foreman, give it your PDF, and ask it to build the form for you.
Every completed pre-start is saved against the job, so the morning checks, the site diary and the crew's hours for the same day sit in one place.
Related
The toolbox talk template covers the weekly safety conversation. For high risk work, see what a SWMS is and when you need one. The site diary template is the record of the day itself, and how demolition contractors run pre-starts in Foreman shows the whole set-up.