How Complys Projects Keeps Every Site and Subcontractor Compliant (2026)

Ask any main contractor where their subcontractor paperwork lives and the honest answer is usually everywhere. Insurance certificates sit in one inbox. RAMS come back as email attachments named after whoever sent them. A CSCS card gets photographed on a phone and never seen again. Site inductions live in a folder on a laptop, and the construction phase plan sits in a shared drive that half the team cannot find. None of it is joined up, and when something goes wrong the first question is always the same. Where is the evidence.

The problem gets worse the more sites you run. One job is manageable with spreadsheets and willpower. Five jobs, each with a different mix of trades, each at a different stage, and each with its own pile of compliance documents, quickly becomes a full-time chase. You end up phoning subcontractors for certificates that expired last month, approving a start on site because the paperwork is probably fine, and hoping the folders match reality if anyone ever asks.

We run DDC Scaffolding alongside building Complys, so this is not theory for us. We have felt the friction of trying to prove competence and information were in place before work started, and we built the Projects feature to fix it. A project in Complys is a job or a site, and it becomes the single place where the trades, the documents, the RAMS, the quotes and the inductions all live together. This article walks through how that works and why it changes the way you manage subcontractors on site.

Why scattered paperwork is a compliance risk, not just a nuisance

Under CDM 2015 the principal contractor carries real duties. You have to plan, manage and monitor the construction phase, make sure the people you engage are competent, provide them with the information they need, and give every worker a suitable site induction. Those duties do not care how busy you are or how many jobs you are juggling. If an inspector asks you to show that a subcontractor was competent and properly informed before they set foot on your site, a vague memory of an email is not evidence.

Scattered paperwork turns every one of those duties into a gamble. You cannot manage what you cannot see. When compliance documents are spread across inboxes and drives, you have no reliable view of who is covered and who is not, so gaps open up quietly. A public liability policy lapses. An accreditation drops off. A RAMS never gets signed. The work carries on regardless because nobody had a clear picture, and the risk sits with you as the contractor in control of the site.

Good construction site management software does not just store the documents. It tells you their status, chases the gaps and keeps everything tied to the job it belongs to. That is the shift from filing to managing, and it is the difference between hoping you are compliant and knowing you are.

One project page for the whole job

Everything for a job in Complys lives on one project page. You create a project with a name and address, and from that point it becomes the home for the trades on site, the RAMS, the requirements, the quotes and tenders, the work reports, visit scheduling, inductions and every attachment that matters. Instead of hunting through folders you open the project and the current state of the job is in front of you.

For developments the structure goes a level deeper. A site can hold plots, meaning the individual properties beneath it. If you are building out a residential scheme you set up the site once and create a plot for each property, which keeps the paperwork organised the way the job is actually organised on the ground. More on why that matters for compliance shortly.

The point of a single project page is not tidiness for its own sake. It is that construction project management stops depending on any one person's memory. A site manager off sick, a handover to a new coordinator, an audit six months later. In each case the record is where it should be, attached to the job, ready to be read by anyone with the right access.

Adding subcontractors and getting requirements right

On the project you add the subcontractors working on the job and tag each one with their trade. That simple step gives you an accurate picture of who is engaged and in what capacity, which is the foundation for everything that follows. You know your groundworkers from your electricians, your scaffolders from your roofers, and Complys uses those trade tags throughout.

Scope of works and AI-read tenders

Before anyone quotes, you set out what the job actually requires. You write the scope of works directly on the project, or you upload a tender document and let the AI pull the requirements out of it for you. That second option saves real time when a tender runs to dozens of pages, because instead of reading and re-keying the requirements by hand you let Complys extract them and then you check them over.

From there you invite a trade to quote. They receive a no-login link that shows them the requirements, so there is no account to set up and no barrier to responding. Their quote comes straight back into Complys, which reads it into a clear breakdown and cross-checks it against your requirements. If something you asked for is missing or has not been priced, Complys flags it. That means you are comparing like for like when you review tenders, rather than discovering on site that a line item everyone assumed was included was never actually quoted.

Vetting compliance before anyone starts

This is the heart of subcontractor compliance, and it is where most contractors lose control. Before a subcontractor starts on your site, you request their documents through the project. Complys uses AI to review the uploaded insurance, accreditations and certificates, and every company on the project carries a compliance status you can see at a glance. Green means covered. Anything else tells you exactly where to focus.

The value here is the at-a-glance status across the whole project. You are not opening each PDF to check a policy date or squinting at an accreditation to see if it is current. You look at the project and the system tells you which companies are ready and which are not. When you are managing subcontractors on site across several jobs at once, that single view is what lets you keep on top of CDM 2015 compliance without living in your inbox.

Vet once, assign down for developments

The plot structure pays off here. On a development you vet a subcontractor's compliance once at site level, then assign that trade down to each plot without re-chasing the same paperwork every time. If your groundworks firm is covered for the site, they are covered for plot 1, plot 12 and plot 30 without you requesting their insurance thirty times over. You do the compliance work once and reuse it cleanly across the whole development, which is exactly how it should work and rarely does with folders and spreadsheets.

RAMS that actually get signed

Risk assessments and method statements are where a lot of good intentions go to die. They get written, filed and forgotten, and nobody signs them. Complys handles RAMS on the project itself. You generate a RAMS for the job with AI, or you link an existing one if the trade has produced their own. Workers then sign off on it, and the approved RAMS sit on the project alongside everything else.

Because RAMS live with the job, the link between the assessed method and the actual work is never broken. When scaffolding or any other form of access is involved, the Work at Height Regulations 2005 require the work to be properly planned and carried out by competent people, and a signed, job-specific RAMS is a core part of showing that planning happened. Having it approved and stored on the project means the evidence is in place before the work starts, not reconstructed afterwards.

Inductions, check-in and knowing who is on site

CDM 2015 requires every worker to receive a suitable site induction, and Complys supports site-specific inductions that fit that duty. Because the induction is tied to the project, it reflects the real hazards and arrangements of that particular site rather than a generic form that covers nothing in particular. A proper site induction is one of the simplest and most visible ways you meet your duties, and it should never be the thing that slips.

Knowing who is physically on site is the other half of this. A QR gate lets workers check in when they arrive, which gives you a live on-site register of who is present. If there is an incident or an evacuation, you have an accurate picture of who is on the ground rather than a guess. It also quietly reinforces the induction and compliance process, because check-in becomes part of the routine of arriving on your site.

Managing the work and the managers

Compliance is the gate, but the job still has to run. The Work Planner handles jobs, tasks and team management for the site, so the day-to-day organisation of the work sits in the same place as the compliance record. Trades log completed work through work reports, with photos, linked back to the job. That gives you a running, visual record of progress that is tied to the project rather than lost in a group chat.

Project managers with permissions you control

If you run several sites you do not want every manager seeing every job. You can assign a project manager to specific sites and control exactly what they can access with tick-box permissions. A regional manager only sees and acts on their own sites, which keeps things clean and keeps sensitive information where it belongs. As the contractor you keep the full picture across every project, while each manager gets a focused view of the sites that are actually theirs.

Setting up a site in Complys from scratch

Here is how a new site comes together from the first click to the first day on the ground. The whole flow is designed to move you from an empty project to a compliant, ready-to-start site without leaving the platform.

You start by creating the project. Give it a name and an address, and if it is a development, add the plots beneath it for each property. That is your site set up as a structure. Next you add the subcontractors you intend to use and tag each one with their trade, so the project reflects the real make-up of the job.

Then you set your requirements. Write the scope of works on the project, or upload the tender and let the AI extract the requirements for you to review. Invite the trades to quote through their no-login link, and as quotes come back Complys reads them into a breakdown and flags anything missing or unpriced against what you asked for. You choose your trades on a clear, like-for-like basis.

With trades selected, you request their compliance documents. Complys reviews the insurance, accreditations and certificates with AI and gives each company a compliance status, so you can see at a glance who is ready to start and who still has a gap to close. On a development you do this once at site level and assign the trade down to each plot. Alongside that you sort the RAMS, generating one with AI or linking an existing document, and workers sign off so the approved version sits on the project.

Finally you set up the site-specific induction and put the QR check-in in place. On day one, workers are inducted, they check in at the gate, and you have a live register of who is on site. Every requirement, quote, certificate, RAMS and induction is sitting on one project page, and the job starts with the compliance already proven rather than promised.

Visit scheduling and staying on top of a live site

Compliance is not only a start-of-job event. A site changes every week, new trades arrive, conditions shift, and the paperwork has to keep pace. Complys lets you schedule visits against the project, so site inspections and management walkarounds are planned rather than remembered. Because the visits sit on the same project as the trades, the RAMS and the check-in register, whoever carries one out is looking at the real, current state of the job rather than a snapshot from the day it started.

This is how a contractor demonstrates that the construction phase was monitored and not just planned. Under CDM 2015 your duty is to plan, manage and monitor, and monitoring means showing up and recording what you found over the life of the job. A scheduled visit that lands back on the project page, alongside everything else, turns that duty into a routine instead of a scramble the week before a client audit.

Being ready for an audit or an incident

The real test of any compliance system is the day someone asks to see it. A principal designer wants sight of your arrangements. A client runs a supply chain audit. An insurer asks questions after an incident. The HSE pays a visit. In every one of those moments the difference between a calm afternoon and a bad week is whether the evidence exists in one place or has to be reconstructed from memory and inboxes.

Because a Complys project holds the trades, the vetted compliance status, the signed RAMS, the inductions, the check-in register and the work reports together, producing that evidence is a matter of opening the job. You can show who was engaged, that they were competent and covered, that they were inducted, that the method was assessed and signed, and who was on site on any given day. That is not extra work you do for the auditor. It is the natural by-product of running the job on the project in the first place, which is exactly why it holds up when it is tested.

There is a commercial edge to this as well as a safety one. Main contractors increasingly choose the subcontractors who make compliance easy, because a supply chain that can prove itself quickly is a supply chain that lowers their own risk. Being the firm whose paperwork is always in order, and always to hand, wins repeat work as reliably as competitive pricing does. The project record earns its keep long after the job is finished.

Bringing it together and getting started

The reason all of this matters is control. When your trades, requirements, quotes, compliance documents, RAMS, inductions, check-in and work reports live together on one project page, managing subcontractors on site stops being a scramble and becomes a process you can trust. You can see the status of every company, prove competence and information were in place before work began, and meet your CDM 2015 duties without turning your week into a paper chase. That is what real construction site management software should do, and it is what the Projects feature is built to deliver.

It is free to start with a trial, so you can set up a real site, add your trades and see the compliance picture come together before you commit to anything. If you run sites and manage subcontractors, the fastest way to understand it is to put one of your own jobs into Complys and watch the paperwork organise itself around the project. Start free and run your next site the way you always wished you could.