Everything was current at induction

That is the problem in one sentence. Compliance is checked once, at the start, and then the documents quietly go out of date across a two-year job while everyone assumes somebody is watching.

What has to stay current

Per subcontractor, and in several cases per person on site. Multiply by thirty subbies and it stops being a job anyone can hold in their head.

Public liabilityExpires annually, and the certificate is a PDF from a broker with the date in a different place every time.

Workers compensationState-specific, and a sole trader arrangement can change mid-project without anyone mentioning it.

Contract works / plantWhere applicable. Often the one nobody chases until an excavator damages something.

Trade licencesElectrical, plumbing, rigging, high risk work licences. Per person, not per company, which is where it gets messy.

SWMSRequired for high risk construction work. Must actually match the work being done, not be a generic document from 2019.

Site inductionsPer person, per site, and the crew changes without notice.

ABN and GST statusQuietly important at claim time.

Why the folder approach fails

Almost every builder has a compliance folder, and almost every compliance folder is a list of documents rather than a list of dates. Nothing in it tells you what expires in the next thirty days, because that information is inside the PDFs.

So the check happens when someone thinks of it, or when an auditor asks, or after an incident. All three are too late in different ways.

The fix is not a better folder. It is reading the expiry date out of every document as it arrives and putting it on a calendar.

What we set up

Extraction on arrival

A certificate arrives by email and the insurer, policy number, coverage amount, insured entity and expiry date come out of it automatically. Including from the scanned ones.

Name matching that survives reality

The certificate says "J & M Enterprises Pty Ltd trading as Metro Electrical". Your contract says "Metro Electrical". These are the same subbie and the system needs to know that, or you get a wall of false alarms and everyone stops reading them.

A register keyed on dates

Not a folder. A view that answers "what expires in the next 30 days" and "who is on site tomorrow without a current induction" without anyone opening a PDF.

Chasing that starts early

Automated reminders to the subbie at 30, 14 and 7 days, escalating to your team only if nothing arrives. Most renewals then land without anyone at your end being involved.

SWMS relevance, flagged not judged

Where a submitted SWMS does not appear to cover the high risk work actually scheduled, it is flagged for a human to look at. This one is a judgement call and it stays with your safety people.

Being clear about what this is not

It is a tracking and chasing system, not a legal or safety opinion. It will tell you a policy expired on the fourteenth. It will not tell you whether your contract required that policy in the first place, whether the coverage is adequate, or whether a SWMS is compliant with the WHS regulations in your state.

Those are questions for your contract administrator, your safety adviser and your broker. What changes is that they are answering them in week two rather than after an incident.

Next: defects and handover