Construction site visitor policy: sign-in, escorts, PPE and insurance

Legal requirements for site visitors

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, employers have a duty to ensure the safety of people who are not their employees but are affected by their work. This includes visitors to construction sites: clients, architects, quantity surveyors, inspectors, delivery drivers, and anyone else who enters the site boundary.

CDM 2015 reinforces this. The principal contractor is responsible for ensuring that suitable arrangements are in place for managing everyone on site, including people who are not carrying out construction work. If a visitor is injured because safety arrangements were inadequate, the principal contractor is liable.

The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 (as applied to construction sites through CDM) also require that pedestrian routes are safe and that people can move around the site without being exposed to unacceptable risks from vehicles, falling materials, or other hazards.

Sign-in procedures

Every visitor must sign in when they arrive and sign out when they leave. This is not optional: it is essential for emergency management. In a site evacuation, you need to know exactly who is on site so that everyone can be accounted for at the muster point. A missing visitor who has not signed out triggers a search of the site, which puts people at risk unnecessarily.

A visitor sign-in record should capture:

• Visitor's name
• Company or organisation
• The person they are visiting or the purpose of the visit
• Time of arrival
• Time of departure
• Vehicle registration (if bringing a vehicle onto site)

Many sites still use a paper visitor book at the gatehouse. This works, but it creates problems: handwriting is often illegible, visitors forget to sign out, and the data is not available anywhere else. If your site office needs to produce a list of who is on site for a muster, someone has to run to the gate to check the book.

Visitor safety briefings

Before a visitor enters the working area of the site, they should receive a safety briefing. This does not need to be as comprehensive as a full site induction for workers, but it should cover:

• The main hazards they may encounter (overhead work, vehicle movements, excavations)
• Where they can and cannot go
• Emergency procedures: what the alarm sounds like, where to go if it sounds, who to follow
• PPE requirements
• The name and contact details of their escort

The briefing can be delivered verbally by the escort or the gatehouse supervisor. Some sites use a short printed or digital briefing card that visitors read and acknowledge. Either way, record that the briefing was given.

Escort requirements

Visitors who are not competent to work on a construction site should be escorted at all times while in the working area. The escort should be a competent person who knows the site, understands the hazards, and can ensure the visitor stays safe.

Practical guidelines for escorts:

• The escort stays with the visitor at all times. If the escort needs to leave, the visitor must return to a safe area (such as the site office) or another competent escort must take over.
• The escort is responsible for keeping the visitor away from active work areas where they could be at risk.
• The escort ensures the visitor wears the required PPE correctly throughout the visit.
• The escort ensures the visitor signs out when they leave.

Some visitors may not need an escort. A client's project manager who holds a CSCS card, has been inducted on the site, and visits regularly may be treated as a regular site user rather than a visitor. The decision should be based on the individual's competence and familiarity with the site, documented in your visitor policy.

PPE for visitors

Visitors must wear the same PPE as everyone else in the areas they are visiting. At minimum, this usually means:

• Hard hat (or safety helmet)
• High-visibility vest or jacket
• Safety footwear with toe protection and penetration-resistant soles

Depending on the area being visited, additional PPE may be required: safety glasses, hearing protection, gloves, or respiratory protection. The escort should advise the visitor on what is needed and provide it if the visitor does not have their own.

Keep a stock of visitor PPE at the gatehouse or site office. Hard hats and hi-vis vests should be clean and in good condition. Issuing a cracked hard hat or a filthy vest to a visiting client does not create a good impression, and damaged PPE does not provide protection.

Insurance considerations

Your employer's liability insurance covers your own employees. It does not automatically cover visitors. Public liability insurance is what covers third parties, including visitors, who are injured on your site.

Make sure your public liability insurance is current and provides adequate cover. Most principal contractors carry at least 10 million in public liability cover, and many clients require higher limits.

If a visitor is on site in a professional capacity (for example, a consulting engineer or an architect), their own employer should have insurance covering them. However, this does not remove the principal contractor's duty of care. If the visitor is injured because of a hazard you should have controlled, you are still liable regardless of whether the visitor's employer also has insurance.

Delivery drivers present a specific challenge. They are not your employees, and they may only be on site for a few minutes. But while they are within your site boundary, you have a duty to protect them. Ensure your traffic management plan and delivery procedures address driver safety, and that drivers receive a brief safety instruction when they arrive.

Moving beyond the paper visitor book

A paper visitor book at the gatehouse is the minimum. It captures who came and when. But it does not help you during an emergency, it does not ensure visitors received a briefing, and it does not give you visibility of visitor traffic across multiple sites.

A digital visitor management system captures the same information but makes it available in real time. During a muster, you know instantly who is on site, including visitors, without sending someone to the gate. Pre-registered visitors can receive their safety briefing digitally before they arrive, reducing the time they spend at the gate.

AttendIQ handles visitor sign-in alongside worker attendance and induction tracking. Visitors are captured in the same system as your workforce, so your muster list is always complete. Pre-visit briefings can be sent digitally, and sign-in records are timestamped and searchable.