What a Permit to Work System Must Contain

The procedure is the system. It defines the activities and conditions that require a permit, the types of permit used, the roles, the permit issuer, the permit holder, the isolating authority, the fire watch or standby person, and who may hold each role; how a permit is requested, assessed, issued, displayed, extended, suspended, cancelled and closed out; how permits interact with each other, for example a confined space entry that also involves hot work; what happens when conditions change or an alarm sounds; and how the system is reviewed. Without the procedure, a permit form is an opinion.

Every permit has at least two signatures that cannot belong to the same person: the issuer, who confirms the controls are in place and authorises the work, and the holder, who accepts the conditions and will supervise the work. High-consequence permits add an isolating authority who confirms energy sources are isolated and proven, and a witness or standby person. The procedure names which positions may fill each role and the training they need. An auditor will test this by picking a completed permit and asking whether the two names were allowed to sign.

One form per class of work, each built from the hazards of that class: the hot work permit around fire, the confined space permit around atmosphere and rescue, the isolation permit around energy sources and proving dead, the excavation permit around services and ground support, the height permit around fall prevention and rescue, the lifting permit around the lift plan and exclusion zone. Each form carries the controls as checks to be completed, the isolations and tests as values to be recorded, the time limits, and the close-out. A general work permit covers non-routine tasks that fall outside the specific classes.

A permit register lists every permit issued: number, type, location, holder, issuer, time issued and time closed out. It is how a site knows what work is live right now, how the issuer avoids conflicting permits in the same area, and how a business proves after the fact that the work was controlled. On a paper or document-based system the register is a controlled spreadsheet or book kept by the issuer; in software it is the permit board.

The system names who may issue permits and what they must have done to be allowed to: training in the procedure, understanding of the hazards of each permit class, and for some permits a formal competency such as confined space entry or electrical isolation. Records of that training are part of the system’s evidence.

Most permit disputes arise when a specialist contractor arrives with their own permit system. The interface document settles in advance whose procedure governs, who issues and who holds, whose SWMS and method statement apply, what the contractor must show before a permit is issued, and whose insurance responds. It is the document that turns a site rule into a contractual position.

A WHS inspector investigating an incident, a principal contractor at pre-qualification, an insurer after a fire and an ISO 45001 auditor under clause 8.1 ask for broadly the same things: the written procedure; evidence of who is authorised to issue permits and that they were trained; completed permits for the work in question with the isolations, tests and sign-offs filled in; the register showing issue and close-out; and evidence that the system is reviewed. A folder of blank forms satisfies none of them.

Permit-to-work software provides a live permit board, mobile sign-on, automatic expiry and reporting, and typically costs from several hundred dollars a month plus set-up. It earns its keep where many permits are live at once across sites. A document-based system, the procedure, forms and register kept as controlled documents, does the same job for a single site, a contractor or a manufacturer issuing permits by the dozen a year, for a one-off cost, and it is what a platform is configured from if the business later grows into one. The wrong choice is neither of these; it is a set of downloaded forms with no procedure behind them.