An electrician from a sub-trade is working on a general contractor's mid-rise project. His Working at Heights card expired three weeks ago. Nobody caught it — not his employer, not the GC's site team. Then an inspector does.
Here's the question every GC and every sub should be able to answer before that morning: who owns this?
The short answer is: both can be held responsible — but the general contractor usually carries the biggest project-level risk. Here's how it generally works in Canada, and similarly in many U.S. jurisdictions.
Scenario one: the expired certification
The worker's employer — the subcontractor — is responsible for ensuring their own people are properly trained. That's an employer's duty. The sub can receive orders or fines from the regulator for putting an untrained worker to work.
But the general contractor has responsibility for the overall site. The GC controls the workplace, and controlling the workplace means ensuring only qualified workers are allowed onto it. So the GC can receive orders or fines too — not for failing to train someone else's electrician, but for letting him through the gate.
The regulator's question isn't just "Why didn't the subcontractor renew the certificate?" It's "Why was this worker allowed onto the site?"
That second question lands on the GC. It can't be delegated, and it can't be contracted away. A clause in the subcontract assigning training duties to the sub is good practice — but it doesn't move the constructor's duty for the site. Two parties, two duties, one expired card.
Scenario two: the missed daily form
Daily fit-for-work declarations and hazard assessments are usually different. Most often they're not a regulatory demand aimed at the sub — they're a site requirement the GC imposes.
When a sub's crew skips them, the GC's remedies are contractual and operational: deny site access, remove workers from site, stop the work, document the non-compliance. Whether there are financial teeth beyond that depends on the subcontract. Many contracts let the GC back-charge costs, issue non-compliance notices, withhold payment, or remove the subcontractor from the project entirely. Others simply require compliance without naming a penalty.
Either way, the practical outcome for the sub is the same: a crew that shows up without the site's requirements done doesn't work that day. And a sub that makes a habit of it stops getting called.
Why this splits into two value propositions
Once you see who owns which risk, the problem stops being "track your workers" and becomes two different problems, owned by two different companies.
The GC's problem is visibility. The GC is ultimately answerable for site compliance, so the GC needs to know every worker from every subcontractor is site-ready before work begins — see all of them in one view, block the ones missing certifications, require the daily forms before arrival, and produce the audit record instantly when the inspector's question comes.
The sub's problem is revenue protection. Many subcontractors — electrical, HVAC, concrete, roofing, drywall, framing — work across multiple general contractors simultaneously, each with different orientation forms, safety requirements, and certificate expectations. Keeping crews compliant against all of them is how a sub avoids failed check-ins at the gate, back-charges, and removal from a project. One place to manage worker readiness, one wallet per worker that satisfies every GC's requirements.
The GC can't delegate the site's risk. The sub can't afford to be the reason work stopped. The fix for both is the same information, visible to both, before the morning gate.
That's the shape of it. Not one customer with one problem — a site where the risk is shared unevenly, and where the party with the most to lose from a bad morning is usually the one who never saw it coming.