How to check credentials and report from site
Three of the jobs a Site Manager does are done standing up, on a phone, nowhere near a desk: deciding whether to let someone through the gate, pulling up a health and safety document when it is asked for, and writing up a near miss before the detail goes cold. Sync puts all three behind one green bar at the top of the screen. This guide walks through each of them.
- Who it is for
- The Site Manager and Admin roles on a Full account. Other roles see a Dashboard button instead.
- Where it lives
- A green bar across the top of Sync with three buttons. No menu down the side.
- What you need
- A phone with a browser and a camera. There is nothing to install.
- The three jobs
- Check a card, find a document, report what happened.
Before you start
Everything in this guide happens in the same Sync you use at a desk, just opened in your phone’s browser. There is no separate app to download. What changes is the layout: instead of the menu down the side, you get a green bar across the top with the three things you actually need on site.
- Your Sync log-in, for documents and reports.
- The project the work is happening on.
- A phone camera that can read a QR code.
- The name of the person you are checking, if their card will not scan.
Open Sync on your phone
Sign in as normal. If you hold the Site Manager or Admin role on a Full account, you get the on-site bar: the Sync wordmark on the left, and three buttons on the right.
Find someone by name when there is no card to scan.
Open the document library, read only.
Raise a near miss, accident or incident.
Every job in this guide starts from one of those three. If you are on a different role you will see a single Dashboard button instead. Ask an Admin to check your role if you are expecting the on-site buttons and they are not there.
Scan the code on their card
Point your phone camera at the QR code on the engineer’s Sync card. It opens their record straight away, and you do not have to be signed in. That is the point: the code has to work on whatever phone happens to be at the gate, including a visiting manager’s.
What you get is a single page: who they are, who they work for, what their role is, whether they are active, and every credential held against them.
Read the status first
Before you look at anything else, look at the pill under the role. It says either Active or INACTIVE - DO NOT ALLOW ON SITE, and it is the one thing on the page that makes the decision for you.
The rule catches something people miss: the company counts as well as the person. If a subcontractor has been made inactive (lapsed insurance, an unresolved dispute, off-boarded from the project), then every engineer on their books fails, however tidy that individual’s own record looks.
| Engineer | Company | What the page says |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Active | Active |
| Active | Inactive | INACTIVE - DO NOT ALLOW ON SITE |
| Inactive | Active | INACTIVE - DO NOT ALLOW ON SITE |
| Inactive | Inactive | INACTIVE - DO NOT ALLOW ON SITE |
Check each credential
Under the status sits one card per credential, grouped by type with the soonest expiry first, so anything about to lapse is near the top rather than buried. Each card gives you:
- The name of the credential, such as a CSCS card or an IPAF category.
- Whether it is Active or Expired, and the expiry date it is judged on.
- Whether it is Required for the work they are here to do.
- The card or certificate number held against it.
- A View document button, when a copy has been uploaded.
Two labels sit at the top of each card and they answer different questions. Active or Expired is about the date. Required or Not required is about the work. A credential can be perfectly in date and still not be one they need today. More importantly, one marked Required and Expired is the combination that should stop them.
View document opens the certificate itself, which is what you want when someone needs to see proof rather than take your word for it. If the button is not there, no copy has been uploaded.
When it says do not allow
This is the screen the whole thing exists for. The status goes red, the wording is unambiguous, and any expired credential is called out on its own card.
The wording carries the message, not just the colour, which matters when you are reading a phone in bright sun with a queue building behind someone. Do not let a red status through on the basis that the rest of the page looks fine. Send it to whoever manages compliance for the project and let them clear it.
No code to scan? Search
Cards get lost, screens crack, phones die. Tap Search engineers in the top bar and find them by name instead. First name and last name are both required; company is optional and worth adding when you already know who they work for.
If you get no results, check the spelling or add the company.
Pick the right person
Results come back as a list of cards, each showing the name, whether they are active, and the company. Tap anywhere on a card to open the same record the QR code would have taken you to.
Shared names are normal on a big site, and the status shown here is only the person’s own. Open the record and read the full status before you decide, because that is where the company’s standing is taken into account too.
Open H&S documents
Tap Health & Safety documents in the top bar. You land on the categories your account has set up: site rules, method statements, COSHH, fire and emergency, and whatever else your health and safety team keeps there. Each one shows a short description and how many documents are in it.
Open a category
Inside a category the documents are grouped into subcategories, five at a time with a View all link when there are more. Anything filed straight against the category, with no subcategory of its own, is collected under a No subcategory heading.
Tapping a document opens the PDF in a new tab, so you can hand the phone over or keep it open while you carry on. A document shown in grey has no file attached and will not open. The entry exists, but nobody has uploaded the file.
Share a category by QR
Some categories are marked Externally visible. Those carry a Get QR code link, which downloads a code you can print and put on the hoarding, in the cabin, or on the induction board, so a delivery driver or a visitor can read the site rules without anyone finding a laptop.
Start the report
Tap Create health & Safety report. It is a three-step form, and the progress rail across the top shows you where you are. The first step is who, what, when and where.
Pick the project by typing into the search field. Choose the type (near miss, accident or incident) and take a moment over it, because it decides what the last step asks you for. Set the date and time, and put your own name in Person Reporting; it is not filled in for you. Add witnesses while you can still see who was standing there.
The Location card next to it takes the address the thing happened at, which is not always the site address. A plot number or a compound is more use to whoever reads this later than the postcode of the main gate.
Describe it, add photos
Step two is the account of what happened, and the photographs. The description has a 1,000 character limit, which is enough for what happened, what was done about it straight away, and what state you left it in.
You can attach up to five photos or videos. This is the part worth doing properly and doing now: the guard that was missing, the state of the ground, the vehicle position. Ten minutes later somebody will have tidied it up, and a photograph taken at the time is worth more than a paragraph written from memory.
Answer the extra questions
The last step is the only part that changes, and what it asks depends on the type you chose back in step 11.
One question: any resolutions? Keep it to the action you took, not a full account. It is a short field.
Injured parties, whether first aid was given, who gave it, what treatment, any details, and a first aid report you can attach.
Weather and injured parties, then your vehicle details and the other party’s: make, model, reg and driver.
If you picked the wrong type at the start, go back and change it. Moving back through the form keeps what you have already entered, photographs included, so there is no penalty for correcting it.
Save the report
Save Report files it, and you get a short confirmation that it has been submitted. That is all it does: there is no follow-up form to fill in and nothing else to chase from here. The report is now on the project record for the health and safety team to pick up.
What you can and cannot do
The document library is deliberately read-only for a Site Manager. Building and maintaining it is a separate job with separate permissions, so if a document is wrong or missing, it goes back to the health and safety team rather than being fixed at the gate.
- Open any document category you have been given access to.
- Read and download the documents inside it.
- Get the QR code for an externally visible category.
- Add a new document or category.
- Edit or rename an existing category.
- Delete anything from the library.
Gate check checklist
Six things to look at before you wave somebody through.
- The status says Active, not INACTIVE.
- The company name matches who you are expecting.
- The role is right for the work, and is not an unsupervised apprentice.
- Every credential marked Required says Active, not Expired.
- The expiry dates are in the future.
- You have opened the document for anything you need to see proof of.
Troubleshooting
Wipe the card and hold the phone about a hand’s width away. If the card is cracked or the code is worn off, use Search engineers instead and find them by name.
Names are matched in full, not partially. “Jim” will not find “James”, and a mis-typed surname returns an empty list. Check the spelling, then add the company to narrow it down.
That is common on a large site. The company shown on each result card is what tells them apart, so check it against who you are expecting before you open the record.
Their company has been made inactive, which fails every one of its engineers. That is deliberate. Raise it with whoever manages compliance rather than waving them through.
No copy has been uploaded against it. The name, number and expiry date are still shown, but you cannot see the certificate itself from here.
Site Managers have read-only access to the document library. Adding, editing and deleting are separate permissions held by the health and safety team.
It is not saved until you finish it, so you will need to start again. If you are somewhere with a poor signal, take your photos first and write the report once you are back in range.
The report has to be attached to a project on your account. If none are set up, the form cannot be submitted. Ask your Sync administrator to add the project first.
Summary
Working from site on a phone:
- 1Scan the QR code on someone’s card to open their record. It works without signing in.
- 2Read the status pill first. It fails the person if either they or their company is inactive.
- 3Check that every credential marked Required is Active and in date.
- 4No card to scan? Search by full name, and use the company to tell people apart.
- 5Health & Safety documents are read-only for a Site Manager, and open in a new tab.
- 6Raise a near miss, accident or incident in three steps, with up to five photos.
All three jobs sit behind the same green bar, and the credential check is the one that works without signing in, so it opens on whatever phone is at the gate.