Free subcontractor induction form template

A one-page record you can fill in at the gate with a subbie who has never been on this job before. Worker details, white card number, emergency contact, a tick list of what you actually covered, and a signature from both of you.

Free, no email required.

You may not be legally required to run one. Do it anyway.

This surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly.

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

That exemption is narrower than it sounds, and it is easy to read too much into it.

What does not go away is the underlying duty. WorkSafe Queensland is explicit that where a site-specific induction is not given, the contents of the safety plan still need to be communicated effectively. The obligation to give workers information, training and instruction about the work, the risks and the controls does not have an exemption. Only the formal site-specific induction requirement does, and only for housing work.

So the practical reading for a residential builder is this: you probably still have to tell a new subbie about the hazards on this site. The induction is just the tidiest way to do it, and the only way that leaves you with a record that it happened.

Victoria is the exception that matters. Victoria never adopted the harmonised WHS laws, and its Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 require an employer to provide construction workers with health and safety training relating to the particular workplace where the work will be performed. No housing carve-out. If you build in Victoria, site-specific training is a regulation.

Rules differ by state and territory, so check your own regulator rather than relying on the Queensland position above.

What the form covers

Site details. Project, address, date. Obvious, and constantly left off, which makes the record useless when you find it in a folder two years later.

Worker details. Name, company, trade, mobile, white card number, other licences. The white card number matters: writing it down is what turns "he said he had one" into a record that you asked and he answered.

Emergency contact. Name and phone. Nobody thinks about this until the afternoon they need it, and then it is the only field on the page that matters.

What you covered. Sixteen tick boxes: site rules, hazards, exclusion zones, PPE, amenities, first aid, the emergency procedure and assembly point, how to report an incident, how to raise a concern or stop work. Tick them as you talk. The value is not the ticking, it is that the list stops you forgetting the assembly point for the fourth time this month.

Declaration and two signatures. Theirs and yours. A form signed by only one party is a weaker record than one signed by both.

Do not fill it in at the ute

The form is a record of a conversation, not a substitute for one. Filled in on a clipboard at the front of the ute, it becomes an exercise everyone can see through. Carried around the site while you walk the actual hazards, it becomes the thing the subbie remembers at three in the afternoon.

The tick list is ordered so it works that way round, roughly following the walk: what they are here to do, then the site, then the hazards, then what to do when something goes wrong.

How to induct a subcontractor covers the walk itself, including the one question worth asking that is not printed on any form.

The problem with paper inductions

The form works. Keeping the forms is where it falls apart.

You end up with a folder in a shed on one job, a few loose sheets in the ute, and no way to answer "who has been inducted on the Kingsley Street job?" without physically going there and looking. When a head contractor or an insurer asks, that is not a good position to be in.

The same thing without the clipboard

Foreman's site inductions run this same sheet as a QR code at the gate. The worker fills it in and signs on their own phone, so there is no clipboard to lose and no pile to file. Nothing to install, which is the difference between a subbie doing it and a subbie arguing about it.

You get a live induction register per project: everyone who has been inducted on that site, with the date and their signature, that you can pull up from anywhere.

Inductions are unlimited on the free plan, including on one live project, so you can run this on a real job without paying anything.

Related

For the wider process rather than the form, read how to induct a subcontractor. If you are chasing site records generally, start with the free site diary template.