Construction site access control is a system that checks at the gate who each worker is, which subcontractor they work for and whether their occupational health and safety (OHS) paperwork is complete, and logs every entry and exit. When the same record feeds the timesheet, claimed headcount meets reality, and one record answers both the safety and progress payment questions.
Key takeaways
- Construction site access control verifies identity, subcontractor and safety paperwork at the gate, and records every entry and exit with its time.
- According to the SGK Statistical Yearbook 2025, 586 of Türkiye's 1,931 work-accident deaths in 2025 (about 30%) were in construction.
- When timesheets come from the gate record, progress payments rest on entries and exits by firm and block, not on the subcontractor's declaration.
- A worker with missing paperwork or no assigned permission is refused at the turnstile, and the reason for refusal is recorded.
- At site entrances with no fixed gate or power supply, an Android phone with NFC can serve as a mobile terminal.
This guide is specific to construction sites; for contractor entry at factories, industrial estates and maintenance jobs, see contractor access and HSE compliance. Here we explain how site access works, set out six steps from turnstile to timesheet and progress payment, and compare a logbook with a card-based system. For the basics, start with what a card access control system is; every related guide is in our access control and attendance hub.
Why is access control on a construction site difficult?
A construction site is far more fluid than a factory. During the structural phase, formwork and rebar crews are on site; during fit-out, it is electrical, plumbing, plastering and painting subcontractors. Some crews stay for three days, others for months. On any given day dozens of firms, hundreds of workers and everything from concrete mixers to crane operators move in and out.
On many construction sites, access control is left to a guard in a site cabin with a logbook. Timesheets are kept somewhere else entirely: at month end, the subcontractor's foreman brings a list, the site manager signs it and accounts pay it. There is no independent record of how many people actually worked on site, or for how many hours.
On a site run on a logbook and subcontractor lists, the consequences are familiar:
- A worker with missing paperwork or no safety induction is let in on the promise that "he'll bring it tomorrow".
- The headcount a subcontractor declares does not match reality, and progress payment discussions turn into arguments.
- After an accident, "was this person on site that day, what time did they arrive, did they hold a working-at-height certificate?" takes hours of searching through records.
- Overtime goes unrecorded, creating legal risk for both worker and employer.
What does an unrecorded site cost?
Construction is one of the sectors with the heaviest toll from fatal work accidents in Türkiye. Data from the Social Security Institution (SGK) makes this plain:
Of the 1,931 work-accident deaths recorded in Türkiye in 2025, 586 (about 30%) were in construction, which also recorded 81,977 work accidents. (SGK Statistical Yearbook 2025, Section 3-1)
Alongside the human cost, the loss of working time is substantial: according to the SGK Statistical Yearbook 2025, workers who had work accidents in 2025 accumulated 4,639,930 days of temporary incapacity.
Long hours are a separate risk. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimate that working 55 hours or more per week led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischaemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase since 2000 (WHO/ILO, Long working hours increasing deaths from heart disease and stroke, 2021). Unrecorded overtime keeps that risk invisible.
Turkish law also makes the record a necessity. Labour Law No. 4857 sets a maximum working week of 45 hours and treats anything beyond it as overtime; it also makes the principal employer jointly liable with the subcontractor for obligations towards the subcontractor's workers. Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331 requires employers sharing the same workplace to coordinate their safety measures. A main contractor that cannot show who was on site, and for how long, carries that liability on a weak record.
How do you set up construction site access control and timesheets? Six steps
- Divide the site into zones. Main gate, site office, laydown area, fuel and chemical store, crane working area, and block- or floor-level work areas. Hazardous zones should be open only to a narrow permission group. Hard hat and vest use in those zones can be checked on camera with AI-based personal protective equipment (PPE) detection.
- Bring the subcontractor and crew structure into the system. Every worker should be linked to a firm, a crew and a block or work package, so "how many of the electrical subcontractor's people are in Block B today?" has a one-click answer, and the same breakdown carries through to the progress payment.
- Link paperwork to permissions. Anyone whose safety induction, medical report or, where needed, working-at-height or operator certificate is incomplete should not get site access on their card, and access should end when a certificate expires. Document types and the approval flow are covered in our contractor article.
- Pick the right credential. Permanent staff get a personal card; crews staying a few days and visitors get a temporary card with a set validity period. At entrances with no fixed gate or power supply, a phone with NFC can act as a mobile terminal. Readers and turnstiles must cope with dust and rain, which means choosing the right IP rating.
- Generate the timesheet from the entry record. Define the shift plan; entry and exit times are then split into normal hours and overtime against that plan. Our article on overtime calculation under Turkish labour law walks through the logic with examples.
- Plan for emergencies and connectivity. In an evacuation, a zone-by-zone "who is on site right now" list must be ready (emergency muster report). Site connectivity can be patchy, so agree up front how the system should behave when the link drops; our article on access control offline mode lists the questions to ask.
Logbook or card-based system?
| Topic | Logbook and subcontractor list | Card access + automatic timesheets |
|---|---|---|
| Headcount on site | Estimate, at end of day | Live, on the dashboard |
| Worker with missing paperwork | Depends on the guard's attention | Card refused, gate stays shut |
| Source of the timesheet | Subcontractor's declaration | Entry and exit record |
| Overtime | Often unrecorded | Separated against the shift plan |
| Records after an accident | Hours of searching | Person, time and access point in one query |
Knowing who works on site matters, and so does knowing which revision of the drawings reached the site. We cover the document flow between office and site in architecture and engineering project file management.
Timesheets generated from site entry also feed overall site tracking; we cover that link in our guide to construction project management software.
How does Digital Bridge deliver construction site access control?
Digital Bridge has served clients across Türkiye from Adana since 2013, developing software and hardware within the same team. In our solutions for construction and contracting firms, we treat site access control not as a standalone hardware job but as the starting point for safety, timesheets and progress payments:
- Site survey. We look at gate locations, vehicle and pedestrian flow, and power and network options on site. The technical feasibility study for hardware is free of charge.
- Hardware selection and installation. Turnstiles suited to a cabin entrance, door readers, barriers and number plate recognition for vehicle gates. See the options on our card access control and licence plate recognition pages. SmartPass's fixed terminal is brand-independent: it works with OSDP readers and dry-contact relays, so existing turnstiles and barriers with a relay input can often be reused, which the survey confirms. Because electronics, enclosures and embedded software come from the same team, we can adapt to site conditions.
- Rule and timesheet design. We set up the subcontractor structure, shift plans and zone permissions with you.
- Payroll and HR link. We plan how timesheet reports flow into payroll together with our HR, payroll and personnel management team.
- Visual verification. ONVIF-compatible cameras at the site gate can be monitored centrally through our IP camera monitoring service.
- Written proposal and support. Scope, phases and cost are set out in writing. We work remotely and on site across all of Türkiye's provinces, with 24/7 technical support.
A day on site with SmartPass
SmartPass, developed by Digital Bridge as part of the Smart360 family, combines card access control, staff time and attendance (PDKS), visitor management and canteen management in one panel. When a card is read, the server decides whether to grant access. Picture a day on a residential project:
06:45 — Morning arrival. The formwork crew passes the turnstile with 13.56 MHz MIFARE cards. One read opens the turnstile and creates the attendance record. No separate time and attendance device is required.
07:10 — A worker with missing paperwork. A new worker's card has been printed, but the HSE team has not yet approved his documents, so the card sits in a "pending approval" group with no zone permissions. The turnstile stays shut and the guard informs the site safety officer. Once the paperwork is complete, the worker is moved to his crew's group and his access applies at every gate within seconds.
08:00 — An entrance without a gate. At a rear entrance where no turnstile has been fitted yet, an Android phone with NFC works as a mobile terminal and decides with the same rules as the fixed gates. Because fixed gates and mobile terminals carry a permission list signed by the server, they keep working when the internet drops; entries are queued and transferred completely, without duplicates, once the link returns.
09:30 — A short-stay crew. The firm behind a façade crew arriving for two days is set up as a subcontractor with a contract end date. The temporary cards issued to the crew are valid only during working hours and only in the Block B work area. When the contract expires, the first read is refused as "outside the firm's contract", so nobody has to cancel cards one by one.
12:00 — Lunch. Workers tap their cards in the site canteen; entitled meals are deducted and the count is kept automatically. At month end, the number of meals served comes from the canteen report, broken down by subcontractor, rather than from an estimate.
15:00 — A refused entry. A worker tries to enter the crane area and the card is refused, with the reason recorded as "no zone permission". Instead of arguing, the site manager checks which permission group the worker belongs to; if access is justified, it is granted in the panel and the change is written to the audit trail.
Emergency. When an evacuation is needed, access points are switched to emergency mode: exits are released, entries are closed and an email goes to the organisation's notification recipients. The dashboard's "inside now" figure shows the number of staff, subcontractors and visitors, and the headcount at the assembly point is checked against it.
Month end. Working time is calculated against the shift plan; the closed month is locked and a monthly summary per person is exported to the ERP as CSV (from the panel) or JSON (via the API). The subcontractor's progress payment list can be checked against the entry and exit record.
How do construction timesheets link to progress payments?
On a construction site, the real test of the timesheet is the progress payment. A subcontractor's claim that "we worked with 40 people this month" becomes a discussion about figures once it sits next to the gate record, showing person-hours by firm and block, day by day. Three rules link the gate record to the progress payment in practice:
- Use the same breakdown. The firm, crew and block split in the gate record should match the work items in the progress payment schedule.
- Fix the cut-off date. The timesheet period and the payment period should close on the same day; otherwise a few days' difference is argued over every month.
- Record the exceptions. Entries without a card, manual corrections and night work should be logged with a reason.
We cover the measurement and approval side in construction progress payment tracking. Measuring excavation and material quantities by drone is covered in drone stockpile volume measurement.
The block and work-package breakdown in the gate record becomes even more useful when it matches the site programme. SmartPM project management, the project management software in the Smart family, runs the programme on a Gantt chart with dependencies and a critical path, so when one task slips, the tasks that depend on it move with it. It can also draft an AI-assisted plan from a document such as a bill of quantities or a site survey report.
For contractors with several sites, each site can be opened as a separate SmartPass organisation with its data in its own database, and authorised users switch between sites from the "Kurumlarım" (My organisations) list without re-entering a password (multi-site access control). Under Türkiye's Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK), card numbers are not stored: each is converted on reading into a one-way hash, and only the hash and the last four digits are kept. Once the retention period ends, the fields that identify a person are deleted, and every change is written to the audit trail with old and new values.
Next step
Pick one of your active sites and write down three things: how many people enter the site on an average day, how many subcontractors are working there, and which document the timesheet relies on today. With that, we can plan a site survey quickly. Because SmartPass is installed with hardware, the price is set by quotation based on the number of access points, the number of people and the hardware required; our article on access control system cost explains what shapes the budget.
Explore the product on our SmartPass page; to buy SmartPass, request a quote via Smart360, or get in touch to arrange a site survey.