Workforce
Stopping proxy attendance on construction sites: QR, photo and geofence
Paper registers and shared biometric machines make it easy to mark absent workers present. Here is a practical way to make every site punch real.
On most construction sites, attendance still lives in a register kept by the supervisor or the contractor. At month end, that register becomes the wage bill. When a friend can sign for an absent worker, or a contractor rounds up headcount, the company pays for days nobody worked.
Biometric machines help in the office. On a site they struggle with dust, damaged fingerprints, power and the simple fact that there are 200 people arriving between 7:45 and 8:15.
Here is a setup that works better, and the reasoning behind each piece.
1. A QR code that changes on its own
Put a tablet or a cheap screen at the site gate showing a QR code. Workers scan it with any phone; no app, no login, no account to create.
The key detail: the code rotates every 20 minutes. A photo of the code shared on WhatsApp stops working once it changes, so a worker who is not at the gate cannot check in for someone who is.
In AttendIQ Civil, the kiosk screen shows the live QR and a feed of recent check-ins, in English and Hindi.
2. A photo with every check-in
After scanning, the worker picks their name and takes a selfie. A photo turns “who checked in?” from a dispute into a lookup. Supervisors reviewing exceptions can see at a glance who was really there.
3. A geofence around the site
The phone’s location is checked against a radius drawn around the site. A punch from outside the boundary is rejected. Combined with the rotating code and the photo, this closes the three common loopholes: the shared code, the borrowed phone and the punch from home.
4. Approvals before money moves
Attendance only matters because it becomes pay. A clean flow looks like this:
- Supervisors approve overtime and corrections for their crews.
- HR builds the wage run: daily wage × days present + overtime − advances, per worker.
- The project manager reviews and approves.
- The director processes payment, and the payment reference is recorded.
Every step is logged, so when a contractor questions a deduction, the answer is a screen, not an argument.
5. Contractors and categories, not one big list
Sites mix permanent staff, contract workers and daily-wage labour across several contractors and skill levels. Group workers by contractor, site and category (skilled, semi-skilled, unskilled) from day one. It makes wage rates, compliance and contractor billing far simpler.
What this changes
- Wage runs match the days people actually worked.
- Supervisors spend less time reconciling registers.
- Directors see attendance, wages payable and safety incidents across every site on one dashboard.
Getting started without disrupting the site
Start with one site for two weeks, keep the paper register running in parallel, and compare. Most teams switch fully once the first wage run comes out cleaner than the register.
Book an AttendIQ Civil demo and we’ll walk through the kiosk, the wage run and the director dashboard on a sample site.