Compliance & standards
What is a CISRS card?
A CISRS card evidences that a scaffolder has been trained and assessed to a recognised standard for the work they do. CISRS is the Construction Industry Scaffolders Record Scheme.
CISRS is a competence card scheme for individual scaffolders, run separately from NASC — NASC is the trade body for scaffolding companies, CISRS is about the person. The two are frequently conflated and a client asking for one is not asking for the other.
The card records the level a person has been assessed at, which governs what work they may carry out.
Scope matters more than the card's name. A card says what a person is assessed to do; it does not authorise work the design does not cover, and it is not a substitute for the structure having been designed properly in the first place.
Cards are time-limited, and renewal generally involves assessment as well as paperwork. A lapse is not something resolved on the morning it is discovered, which is why the expiry date matters more than the card itself.
What goes wrong on site
- A card expiring mid-contract with nobody watching the date, discovered at a gate.
- Assuming a card covers work outside what the holder was assessed for.
- Expiries tracked in a spreadsheet nobody owns.