Free drill
Name the permit before you name the method
Permits exist because somebody was hurt without one. Choosing the right one is the first move on any controlled task, and real jobs often need more than one at a time. This drill puts 12 scenarios in front of you, names the primary permit for each, and says which others usually travel alongside it.
Why do some tasks need more than one permit?
Because permits control hazards, not jobs, and one job can create several hazards at once. Cutting in a fitted-out hall introduces an ignition source, which is what the hot works permit governs, but inhibiting the detection so the cutting does not trigger an evacuation creates a second and quite different hazard: a room that can no longer tell anyone it is on fire. That needs its own permit, its own reinstatement time, and its own named person to put it back. Thinking in hazards rather than in tasks is what stops the second permit from being forgotten, and forgetting it is common precisely because the first one felt like the answer. The question worth asking on any permit is simply what else did this task change.
Pick the permit that governs each task. Real jobs often need more than one, so each answer names the primary permit and says which others usually travel with it.
Scope. Every scenario here is fictional and generalized, set on the fictional Example Site EX1. This is career and interview preparation at awareness level, not a live operating procedure, engineering advice or any form of authorization. On a real site, follow your employer's procedures, your authorized training and local requirements, and if the two ever disagree, the site wins.
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01 Welding a support bracket in a data hall that is already fitted out.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Hot works
An ignition source is being introduced into a finished space. A fire system impairment permit usually travels with it if detection has to be inhibited.
Not Hot cutting and welding. Both names appear in the list because sites use both. Some permit registers carry a specific cutting and welding form alongside the general hot works permit; others carry only the general one. That is exactly why the general permit is the safe answer here, and why the real move on site is to read your own register rather than assume the name.
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02 Taking a thermographic survey inside a live LV panel.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Energised electrical
The panel stays live by design, so this is the exception that has to be justified, with boundaries and arc-rated PPE set before the cover comes off.
Not Isolation and LOTO. Isolation is exactly what is not happening. The panel has to stay live for the survey to be worth taking, which is why this is the exception that has to be justified in writing, with boundaries and arc-rated PPE, rather than a task controlled by an isolation permit.
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03 Entering a below-slab duct void to pull cable.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Confined space
Restricted access with a foreseeable specified risk. Atmosphere testing, a top person and a rescue plan are the point of the permit, not paperwork.
Not Ceiling and floor void access. A void-access permit governs getting into the space and working in it. It does not govern an atmosphere that can harm you, and a below-slab duct is a restricted space with a foreseeable specified risk. Where both apply, confined space governs, because it is the one that requires atmosphere testing, a top person and a rescue plan.
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04 Replacing a light fitting from a mobile tower.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Working at height
A fall would cause injury. Collective protection is considered before personal, and the tower inspection record matters as much as the harness.
Not Scaffold handover. A scaffold handover covers erected scaffold being released for use by another party. A mobile tower carries its own inspection record instead, and the permit that governs the task is still working at height.
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05 Craning a CRAH unit onto the roof.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Lifting operations
A planned lift under an appointed person, with the SWL verified against the actual load and an exclusion zone that is genuinely not crossed.
Not Roof access. Roof access is very probably needed as well, for the people receiving the load. It is not the permit that governs the lift, which needs an appointed person, a lift plan, the SWL verified against the actual load, and an exclusion zone.
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06 Breaking into a chilled water line that has been drained down.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Line breaking
Drained is not the same as safe: residual content and stored pressure are what the permit forces you to prove. Isolation and LOTO usually travels with it.
Not Pressure testing. Pressure testing proves that a system holds. Line breaking opens one that may still be holding something, which is the opposite problem and the reason the permit forces you to prove the content and the stored pressure rather than assume them.
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07 Isolating a distribution board so a circuit can be worked on dead.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Isolation and LOTO
The isolation itself is the controlled activity, and proving absence of voltage at the point of work is the step that gets skipped when people are rushing.
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08 Inhibiting smoke detection in a room so cutting can take place.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Fire system impairment
The detection outage is the hazard being created, and it needs its own reinstatement time. Hot works covers the cutting; this covers the system you turned off.
Not Hot works. Hot works governs the cutting. This permit governs the system you switched off to allow it, and it is the one that carries a reinstatement time and a named person to prove the detection back in service.
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09 Digging a trench across the compound for a new duct route, where existing services are known to run.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Excavation
What is already buried is the hazard, which is why the permit turns drawings into a hypothesis to be proved by scanning and safe digging rather than a map to trust. Isolation and LOTO travels with it wherever a live service is identified.
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10 Reversing a delivery lorry into a compound where people are working on foot.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Vehicle and plant movement
The hazard is the interaction between plant and people, so the permit is about segregation, routes and a banksman rather than about the vehicle. It is the permit most often skipped, because a lorry feels ordinary in a way a crane does not.
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11 Taking a temporary supply off a distribution board to run tools during fit-out.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Temporary power
Temporary installations are the ones nobody owns, so the permit exists to give them an owner, a test record and a removal date. Isolation and LOTO travels with it at the point it is connected and again when it comes out.
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12 Releasing an erected scaffold for use by other trades.
Choose the primary permit
Answer
Scaffold handover
Handover is the moment responsibility moves, and the tag on the scaffold is a summary of a record rather than the record itself. Working at height still governs what people do once they are on it.
Now say it out loud
Clicking the right option is the easy half.
In the room you will not be given the options. Cover them, and answer these three out loud, in full sentences, as if somebody had just asked. If a sentence stalls, that is the part to go back and read again.
- 01 Take one task from this drill and name every hazard it creates, then say which permit governs each hazard.
- 02 Describe what handback has to state, and what goes wrong when a permit expires with the work suspended rather than complete.
- 03 Say how you would raise it if you were asked to start a task and the permit did not cover what you were actually about to do.
What does handback actually require?
More than telling someone you have finished. Handback closes the loop the permit opened, and it has to state what was left behind rather than only that the work stopped. Was the area left safe and clear, are the isolations removed or deliberately retained, and if retained, who now owns them. An inhibited fire system has to be proved back in service, not assumed. The permit is then cancelled and returned to the issuer, which is the step that lets the next shift see the hazard is genuinely gone. The failure mode is a permit that expires quietly with work suspended rather than complete, leaving a half-finished condition nobody is tracking, which is exactly the state the paperwork was invented to prevent.