Hot works permit

Why hot work needs a permit

Welding, grinding, soldering, torch-on roofing and disc-cutting all create heat, sparks or naked flame — and the danger does not stop when the tool does. Most hot-work fires start after the job has finished, smouldering quietly in dust, voids and adjoining materials for minutes or hours before they take hold. A permit forces the pre-work checks, names a fire watch, and pins down what has to happen once the work is over.

HSE identifies a permit-to-work as the appropriate way to manage hot-work fire risk on larger construction sites. The three baseline controls are simple: clear (or protect) the area of combustibles, have the right extinguishers at the point of work, and keep a continuous fire watch.

The fire-watch logic

The fire watch is the single most important control. A competent person — with no other duties — watches the work area and everything heat can reach: floors above and below, the far side of walls, connected pipework and steel. They keep watching during the work and for at least 60 minutes after the last hot work, with a further check 2 hours afterwards to catch slow-developing smouldering. Because of that watch period, hot work should stop one to two hours before the site closes, so nobody is left unsupervised over a quiet building.

Don't forget the detectors

Smoke and heat detection is often isolated during hot work to stop false alarms. That isolation has to be reinstated and proven working before the permit can be closed — which is why it appears as a mandatory close-out line on this template, not just a pre-work tick.

This template aligns with HSE's HSG168 Fire Safety in Construction and HSE's guidance on process fire risk. It drafts the form only — the permit is live work, and only the named issuing authority on site can issue it and authorise the work to start.