Contractors, permits and site rules

What this is for

A building usually has conditions attached to letting somebody in: read the fire procedure, hold current public liability insurance, do not start cutting until someone has authorised it.

Those conditions normally live in a folder, a spreadsheet and somebody's memory, which means they are checked properly on the days when nothing goes wrong and skipped on the day something does. This puts them where the person actually is — at the desk, or at the screen, on the way in.

None of it is switched on to begin with. A building that has set none of this up signs people in exactly as before.

Site rules on the way in

Write what somebody needs to know in their first minute — where to go in an alarm, what to wear past reception, what not to photograph. It appears at the booth just before they are signed in, and they tap to say they have read it.

It is last in the questions, on purpose: somebody reads the rules once they have decided to come in, not as the first thing a screen shows a stranger.

You can limit it to certain kinds of visit. A contractor should read it; a courier who is inside for forty seconds should not be asked to, because asking everybody to read fire procedures to hand over a parcel is how people learn to tap past things without looking — and that costs the contractor who needed to read them.

Mirra records that the text was shown and accepted, which is honestly what it knows. The button does not wait for somebody to scroll to the bottom: a rule that forces scrolling teaches people to flick to the end.

Documents a visitor has to hold

Record what a contractor has produced and when it runs out — public liability insurance, a method statement, a competence card. Then say which kinds of visit require which, and the booth stops signing in anybody whose paperwork is missing or out of date.

You note the kind, the name on it and when it runs out, and you can attach the certificate itself — a PDF, or a photograph of one taken at the desk. Both are worth having, and the record alone is not a lesser version: somebody who has seen current cover and noted its expiry has done the part that is useful at half past eight, and insisting on a scan before it counts is how buildings end up recording nothing at all. There is still no way for a contractor to send paperwork in ahead of the visit.

Nothing can be deleted either, and that is deliberate. A document that was on file when somebody was let in is part of why they were let in. Something recorded wrongly gets a correction added beside it; something expired ages out on its own.

The list warns you a month before something lapses, which is roughly how long it takes to get a certificate out of an insurer.

Current

In date, or has no expiry at all. A signed NDA does not lapse, and is never treated as though it had.

Expiring soon

Inside a month. A warning to chase it, not a reason to stop anybody.

Expired

Past its date. The booth will not sign this person in on its own.

Somebody who renewed has valid cover even with the old certificate still on file. One current document of a kind is enough.

The rule catches somebody on their second visit, not their first. The booth and the desk both check against the record the building already holds for that name, and a person who has never been before has no record — so they are signed in, and the requirement bites next time. Where a contractor's first day is the one that matters, sign them in at the desk.

When somebody is stopped

This is the part worth understanding before you switch any of it on, because it decides what happens to a real person standing in your lobby.

A failed check does not refuse the visit. It refuses the self-service path. The booth says one sentence — please see the desk — and that is all it ever says, whatever the cause.

At the desk, your receptionist sees what is actually wrong, what the visitor has on file, and a box to record the certificate they are holding. Very often that is the whole fix: record it, and the same sign-in goes through with no override at all.

Where it genuinely needs a judgement, they can sign the person in anyway. It asks why, and will not proceed without an answer. The reason is kept against the visit with their name, because after an incident the question is who let them in and why, and "probably fine" is not an answer.

The booth is never told why somebody was stopped, and neither is anyone standing behind them. An expired insurance policy read out on a lobby screen is a commercial embarrassment; a blocked-list hit read out there is worse, and worse still for somebody who happens to share a name.

Permits to work

Permits are the building's alone. A tenant with its own sign-in cannot see one, issue one or sign one off, and no permit appears on their copy of the evacuation list. You authorised the work, you set the conditions, and you carry the duty to close it off — a company that has never seen the permit cannot be the one to say the work is done.

Issue a permit against a visit — hot works, working at height, a confined space, an electrical isolation. Say where, what they are doing, and when the permission runs out. An end time is required, because a permit that never expires is not a permit.

When the work is finished, somebody signs it off. That is a deliberate act by a named person, and it is not the same as the permission simply running out.

That difference is why open permits are drawn in red once they are past their time. For hot works especially, the gap between "the cutting stopped" and "somebody checked nothing is smouldering" is the fire watch — and a permit nobody has signed off is a job nobody is watching.

• Open permits appear on the reception page until somebody signs them off
• One past its time is flagged, not quietly dropped from the list
• The list says whether the person holding it is still signed in
• Issuing and signing off both go on the visit's record
• A sign-in belonging to one company has no Permit button and no permit list

Permits and the alarm

Open permits go on the evacuation list, and this is the reason they are in a visitor book rather than a folder.

When the alarm sounds, the people who need to know get an email that already says who is inside. It now also says what work was authorised and not signed off: hot works in plant room 2, issued to a named contractor, still signed in, permission ran out at 15:00. That is the sentence a fire service wants on arrival, and it is the sentence a folder in a locked office cannot produce.

If anything is past its time, it goes in the subject line — somebody reading on a phone in a car park may never scroll.

The blocked list

Some people should not be signed in without a conversation: a contractor removed from site, a former employee, a known problem.

Only an owner can add or lift one. That is deliberate rather than awkward — barring a named person from a building carries legal weight, and the person on the desk is exactly who would be tempted in the middle of a disagreement.

It asks for a reason, and it expires. Left alone it lasts twelve months; indefinite is a box you tick rather than what happens when you leave a date blank. A block nobody revisits becomes permanent by accident, and years later somebody is refused entry over a note nobody remembers writing.

Lifting one clears it completely. The activity log keeps what happened; the person's record does not carry a shadow of a decision that was reversed.

Who can add one

An owner. Reception sees that somebody is on the list — they cannot decide sensibly otherwise — and cannot put them there.

Who can be added

Somebody who has visited before. A name typed from memory is how the wrong person ends up on a watchlist.

What the visitor sees

Nothing. They are asked to see the desk, in the same words as anybody whose paperwork is out of date.

What a tenant sees

Nothing either. A sign-in belonging to one company is never told that anybody is on the list, or why — asked one name at a time, that would be a way to read the building's list back out.

A blocked visitor is not turned away by Mirra. They are sent to a person, who decides. The system narrows; a human chooses.