Permits to Work

A Permit to Work authorises a specific piece of high-risk work — hot work, confined space entry, working at heights, lock-out/tag-out, or excavation — for a defined location and time window, and (unlike most of the other registers) links directly to the exact Hazard and Safe Work Procedure records it relies on, not just a text description of them.

The value of a permit system comes from someone actually checking, at the moment work starts, that the assessed hazard and the approved procedure for it exist and are being followed — not from having a form on file. Because a permit's hazard and procedure fields are real relational links resolved against the live Hazard and Safe Work Procedures registers (not free text), a permit can only reference records that actually exist in the system, and anyone viewing an issued permit can open the exact hazard assessment and procedure it was issued against.

A permit is requested for a permit type, location and requester, then optionally linked to a hazard and/or procedure. It's created as requested, moved to issued once work is authorised to begin, and closed once the work is finished. An issued permit carries an issue date and a valid-until date; a permit still marked issued after its valid-until date has passed is a real site-safety concern, not just a stale record, and the register treats it as expired for display purposes without changing its stored status automatically.

The list page shows every permit with its type, status, and validity, and can be filtered/sorted by type, status, or valid-until date. The detail page shows the full permit including its linked hazard and procedure, if any; create and edit forms use the same fields, with the hazard/procedure fields presented as pickers over the live registers rather than free text.

• Permit type — required. One of Hot work, Confined space entry, Working at heights, Lock-out / Tag-out, Excavation.
• Location — required. Where the work is happening.
• Requested by — required. Who requested the permit.
• Linked hazard — optional. Resolved against the live Hazard & Risk Register — pick the specific hazard assessment this work relates to.
• Linked procedure — optional. Resolved against the live Safe Work Procedures register — pick the specific procedure this work will follow.
• Status — one of requested, issued, closed.
• Issue date / Valid until — set once a permit is issued; define the window during which the permit authorises work.

Clearing a previously-linked hazard or procedure on the edit form removes the link (saved as no link) rather than leaving the previous value in place — the two are treated identically to any other field on the form.

There is no separate approval workflow or notification triggered by changing a permit's status in the current version of the product — moving a permit to issued or closed is a direct field edit, available to any user with edit access to this register. A permit whose valid-until date has passed while still issued is flagged as expired wherever the permit is displayed, as a visual signal for whoever is monitoring the register, not as an automatic status change or block.

Can a permit exist without a linked hazard or procedure? Yes — both links are optional, since not every permit type necessarily has a corresponding hazard/procedure record already in the system. Link them whenever the underlying records exist; an unlinked permit is valid but gives a reader less to go on.

What happens to a permit if its linked hazard or procedure is later changed? Nothing automatically — the link is to that specific record, and the permit doesn't re-validate against the hazard's or procedure's current content or status after being saved.