Knowing who is certified for what, before they walk onto site

Competency lived in three places that never agreed: a training spreadsheet held by HR, a stack of certificates in the safety officer's cabinet, and the contractor's own paperwork produced at the gate. Nobody could answer "is this person allowed to operate that machine today?" without three phone calls.

Medicals and licences expired quietly. A rigger whose certificate lapsed last month kept working, because nothing was watching the date and the certificate in the file still looked valid at a glance. Training that had been paid for was repeated because there was no record it had happened, and training that was legally required was missed because there was no record it hadn't. When an incident happened, proving the operator had been trained and assessed meant searching for a piece of paper.

Every person carries one record — employee or contractor — holding their certificates, medicals, licences, inductions and assessments, each with its own expiry date. A competency matrix maps roles and tasks to what they require, so the question "is this person cleared for this task on this site" has one answer rather than three opinions.

Expiry alerts escalate: first to the individual, then to their supervisor, then to the responsible manager, on a schedule set per certificate type — a medical warns further out than a site induction. A person whose competency has lapsed shows as non-compliant before the day it matters, and the gate check surfaces it if they arrive anyway. Training bookings, attendance and assessment results append to the same record, so what was paid for, what was attended and what was passed are one history instead of three.