GUIDE · BUILD WEEK
The people building your site are the hardest list you hold.
Contractors arrive earliest, change most often, work in the most dangerous parts of the site and are employed by someone other than you. That combination is why build week is where accreditation is won or lost.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Contractor accreditation is the process of vetting, approving and controlling access for third-party working staff: riggers, electricians, stage build, fencing, traffic management, cleaning and security. It differs from crew accreditation in three ways: the documents are checked before access is granted, access is usually staged by build phase, and the list changes daily because the contractor, not you, decides who turns up.
Why contractors are different
You do not employ them, so you do not control who they send. You asked for six riggers; eight arrive, two of whom are not on any list, and the crew chief is certain it was cleared. Meanwhile the schedule has moved and the fencing crew who were due Thursday are at the gate on Tuesday.
Handling this by asking for a name list in advance does not work, because the list is out of date before it is sent. What works is giving the contractor the list and making them maintain it, against an allocation they cannot exceed without asking.
The documents worth actually checking
Every event asks for documents and most events do not check them, which is worse than not asking, because the file implies a check that never happened. Ask for less and verify what you ask for.
- Competence cards where the work requires them, such as CSCS for construction-type work or a relevant plant or rigging qualification. Check the expiry date, which is the field that fails most often.
- Public liability and employer liability insurance, at the level your own contract or licence requires, in date for the period they are on site.
- Risk assessments and method statements for the work being done, reviewed by whoever is competent to review them, not filed unread.
- Right to work checks where you are the employer. Where the contractor is the employer, that duty is theirs, and what you want is their confirmation in writing rather than a folder of other people's passports you now have to protect.
- Site-specific induction, recorded per person with a date, because an induction nobody can evidence is an induction that did not happen.
Staged access by build phase
A site is not one place across time. During build there is no audience and the hazards are plant, working at height and vehicle movement. On show days the hazards are crowds. The access that made sense on Tuesday is often wrong on Friday.
Staging access by phase, so a build contractor's pass stops working when their scope ends, removes a whole category of problem: the contractor who is still on site with a working pass and no reason to be, on the busiest day of the event.
Data protection, briefly and seriously
Contractor accreditation collects identity documents, sometimes photographs, sometimes health information from a medical declaration. In the UK that is personal data under UK GDPR, and health information is special category data with a higher bar.
The practical rules: collect only what you will check, write down why you are collecting it, keep it for a defined period tied to the event rather than forever, and be able to delete it. If you are holding scans of passports in a shared drive after the event, that is a risk you are carrying for no operational benefit.
What good looks like on the gate
A contractor arrives, gives a name or presents a pass, and the steward gets one of three answers in under a second: yes, no with a reason, or refer. Anything slower creates a queue of vehicles on a road you do not control, which is a licensing problem as well as an operational one.
The most common cause of a slow contractor gate is not technology. It is that the person on the gate has a list that disagrees with the list the contractor was told about, and no way to resolve the difference except a radio call to someone who is busy.
Written from running accreditation on live events, and generalised so it is useful whatever you run it on. Last reviewed: 19 August 2026.
QUESTIONS THIS PAGE GETS ASKED
What documents should contractors provide for event accreditation?
The ones you will genuinely check: in-date competence cards for the work, public and employer liability insurance covering the dates on site, risk assessments and method statements reviewed by someone competent, and a recorded site induction per person. Asking for documents nobody reviews creates an obligation without a control.
Who is responsible for right to work checks on contractors?
The employer. Where a contractor employs the person, the duty is theirs, and written confirmation from the contractor is usually the appropriate evidence for you to hold. Collecting copies of every subcontractor's identity documents makes you the custodian of data you have no reason to hold.
How do you handle contractors whose crew changes daily?
Give the contractor an allocation and let them manage the names against it, with changes visible to you rather than mediated by email. Your team then reviews exceptions, such as a request to exceed the allocation or a document that has expired, instead of retyping a list every morning.
Should contractor passes expire when the build finishes?
Yes, where the work has a defined end. Access staged by build phase is the cleanest way to stop build-week credentials circulating on show days, and it removes the awkward conversation about collecting passes back from people who have already left site.