Permit to work: the process explained
A permit to work is a formal authorization that high-risk work — hot works, confined space entry, work at height, live electrical, excavation near services — may proceed under specified precautions, for a specified time, by specified people. It is a control loop with four gates: request, approve, activate, close.
The four gates
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Request
The party doing the work describes the task, location, times, people and the hazards they have assessed. A vague request (“welding, Tuesday”) should be bounced — precision at request time is what the whole system rests on.
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Approve
A named authorized manager reviews the request against everything else happening on site: other permits, adjacent trades, weather, isolations needed. Approval attaches conditions — fire watch, gas testing, barriers, PPE — and is a signature, not a nod.
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Activate
The permit goes live only when its preconditions are verified on the ground that day: isolations proven, fire watch present, atmosphere tested. Approved-but-not-activated is the state that catches double-booked spaces and changed conditions.
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Close
Work complete, area inspected, hazards removed — fire watch maintained after hot works for the specified period — and the permit is formally closed. An expired-but-unclosed permit is a red flag in any audit.
Where paper permit systems fail
- Nobody knows what is live. The permit board is in the cabin; the work is on level 6. Conflicting permits — hot works above, flammables below — get caught by luck.
- Approvals become rubber stamps. When the approver signs a pad of blanks on Monday, the control has already failed.
- Time limits are unenforced. Paper does not expire visibly; permits run on past their window because closing them is friction.
- The audit trail is reconstructable. Which is to say: it is not an audit trail.
A digital permit system makes state visible (requested / approved / active / closed), keeps the manager gate real with named approvals, and timestamps every transition. Field crews see what is live from the phone; the office sees the whole board.
Doing this in TerenIQ
TerenIQ's permit module runs the full loop:
- Hot works, confined space, working at height — request, approve, activate and close, with a manager gate at every step.
- Every transition is stamped with who, when and where, building the audit trail as the work happens.
- Active permits are visible to everyone on the project from the phone, so conflicts surface before they become incidents.
- Close-out is enforced, not assumed — open permits stay visibly open until someone closes them.
Frequently asked questions
Which jobs need a permit to work?
Commonly: hot works, confined space entry, work at height beyond routine scaffold use, live electrical work, excavation near buried services, and work on pressurized or hazardous systems. Your safety plan should define the trigger list for your sites.
Who can approve a permit to work?
A named, trained, authorized person — typically the site or project manager — who understands both the task's hazards and everything else happening on site that day. The approver and the requester must not be the same person.
How long is a permit to work valid?
Only for the period stated on it — typically a shift or a day for hot works. If the work runs over, the permit is re-validated or re-issued; it never silently continues.