In Australian mining and civil contracting, the words "contractor onboarding" and "site induction" often get used interchangeably. Sometimes it doesn't matter. Sometimes it does — and when it does, getting the terminology wrong leads to gaps in the compliance process and workers turning up to sites they aren't actually cleared for.
Here's the simple version of the difference, and where it matters operationally.
Contractor onboarding: the company-level relationship
Contractor onboarding is the process a contracting company business goes through with a client to be approved to work on that client's projects or sites. It's the company-to-company relationship being established.
Typical contractor onboarding includes:
- Submitting the contracting company business's insurances (public liability, workers' comp, professional indemnity)
- Providing safety policies, environmental management plans, and quality systems
- Demonstrating financial standing and previous project experience
- Agreeing to client-specific terms, codes of conduct, and reporting obligations
- Uploading documents to a client portal (Pegasus, Avetta, Cm3, or the client's own system)
- Going through pre-qualification scoring
This typically happens once per contracting company-client relationship — usually before any specific work starts, and with periodic renewals (annually or biennially). It's primarily an administrative and procurement process.
Site induction: the worker-to-site relationship
Site induction is the process an individual worker goes through to be cleared to enter and work on a specific worksite. It's the worker-to-site relationship being established.
A typical site induction includes:
- General site safety induction (emergency procedures, geography, hazards specific to that site)
- Role-specific induction (work at heights, confined space, mobile plant operation — whatever applies to the worker's role)
- Site-specific rules (vehicle access, smoking areas, drug and alcohol policy, fatigue management)
- A test or sign-off that the worker has understood the content
This happens for every worker, every site, every time the worker's induction expires. A worker mobilising across four mine sites will typically need four separate site inductions, each with its own expiry cycle.
Where they overlap
In practice, the two layers connect: a contracting company can't get a worker through a site induction if the contracting company business hasn't been onboarded first. The principal contracting company will simply refuse the upload.
Many client portals also blur the language — Pegasus might use "onboarding" to describe both the company-level approval and the worker-level induction tracking. Cm3 separates them more cleanly. Mine operators tend to use "induction" for the worker-level layer and "approval" or "prequalification" for the company layer.
So if you hear "onboarding" in a project meeting, the safe move is to clarify which layer they mean — we're onboarding the business or we're onboarding the workers. They're different problems with different timelines and different stakeholders.
Why the distinction matters operationally
Three places where the distinction actually changes how you handle compliance:
1. Renewals run on different cycles. Company-level onboarding (insurances, policies) typically renews annually. Site inductions might be 6, 12, or 24 months depending on the site. Treating them as one thing means you miss expiries on one layer while focusing on the other.
2. Responsibility sits with different people. The contracting company's office team usually handles company-level onboarding (insurance certificates, policies). The field coordinator handles worker-level inductions. If both think the other is on it, you get gaps.
3. Failure modes are different. A lapsed company-level onboarding means no workers from your business can mobilise to that client. A lapsed worker-level site induction just means that one worker can't mobilise to that one site — your other workers can still go. Different scale of consequence, different urgency of response.
How PIAGO handles both
Both products hold the two layers in one system and track them separately — GO! Site Ready from the contracting company's side, GO! Site Approved from the operator's:
- Company-level: contracting company business profile with insurances, policies, certifications, ISO accreditations, and client-portal verification status — each tracked against its own expiry cycle.
- Worker-level: individual worker profiles with site-specific induction records, role-specific tickets, medicals, and credentials — each matched against the requirements of the specific sites the worker mobilises to.
When you ask "is this worker ready for that site, today?" the system checks both layers automatically. If the company's onboarding has lapsed at the client, no workers can mobilise — and you'll know about it 30 days before it happens. If the worker's site induction has lapsed at one particular site, only that worker is affected — and again, you'll know in advance.
For more on how this works in practice:
- Contractor induction software — the site-induction and onboarding layer in detail
- Workforce compliance — the worker-credential tracking that runs alongside inductions
- Contractor management software — the broader contractor-management view that covers both layers
