School contractor compliance in Queensland: the essential checklist
Every trade that walks through a school gate carries obligations for the school as well as the tradesperson. This is the working checklist: what you must be able to prove, and the September 2025 Blue Card changes that made many contractor registers out of date.
Who counts as a contractor at a school?
Anyone engaged to perform work who is not directly employed by the school: electricians, plumbers, cleaners, groundskeepers, ICT technicians, lift and fire-system servicing, project builders. Education Queensland's guidance treats visitor and contractor management as a single accountability: the school must know who is on site, why, and whether they were entitled to be there.
The five things a school must be able to prove
1. A current contractor register. Which businesses are engaged, their ABN, their insurance (public liability at minimum, workers compensation where required), and when each document expires. An ABN that has been cancelled or a lapsed certificate of currency is exactly the kind of detail that surfaces after an incident, when it is too late.
2. Working-with-children status. Blue Card requirements for contractors are more nuanced than most people assume, and they changed in September 2025. The short version: many employed tradespeople doing work with only incidental contact with children do not need one, but business owners and operators carrying out work at schools generally do, and the seven-day exemption does not apply to them. A Negative Notice must stop a person at the gate, every time. Our Blue Card guide for school contractors walks the decision tree.
3. A sign-in record that matches reality. Who was on which campus, when they arrived, when they left. During an evacuation this stops being paperwork and becomes the muster list. If contractors can walk past reception without signing in, the record fails on the day it matters.
4. Permits for high-risk work. Hot work, working at heights, electrical isolation, confined spaces and excavation each need a documented authorisation with controls, a defined window, and sign-off. See what a permit-to-work covers for each type.
5. An incident trail. When something goes wrong, the school needs the report, the investigation steps, and the resolution, with names and timestamps. If the organisation runs a central WHS register, school-level capture should feed it rather than fork it.
What changed in September 2025
Queensland's Blue Card system was amended from 20 September 2025 to capture business owners and operators whose business activities include carrying out work within a school, with a transition window that closed on 20 March 2026. If your contractor register predates those changes and has not been re-verified since, treat it as stale: businesses that were legitimately unregistered before may need cards now.
The checklist
- Contractor register current: ABN verified, insurance certificates in date, review dates set
- Blue Card status recorded per person, not per company, with expiry tracking and Negative Notice handling
- Register re-verified against the September 2025 Blue Card changes
- Sign-in enforced at reception for every visit, with sign-out
- Evacuation view: one screen listing everyone currently on site
- Permit templates in place for the five high-risk work types, with approval before work starts
- Incident capture wired to your WHS register, not a paper form in a drawer
- Audit trail: who approved what, when, exportable when the auditor asks
Doing it with software instead of spreadsheets
Every item above can be run on paper and spreadsheets, and many schools do. The failure mode is drift: expiry dates pass silently, sign-in sheets stay in a folder, and the register diverges from reality. Contractor management software exists to make the drift impossible. Onsitr is our platform built specifically for Australian schools: vendor onboarding and document expiry tracking, Blue Card validation at sign-in, QR sign-in with a live on-site board, the five permit types, and WHS incident capture with webhooks to your existing register.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Requirements change; always confirm your obligations against current Queensland Government guidance and your own legal advice.