Sixteen blue files: how a crew from Azerbaijan passed the main contractor's access check

01 / Request

Eleven pages sent at 23:40

At 23:40 on a Tuesday the subcontractor's director forwarded Olena an email from the main contractor with an eleven-page attachment and added a single line: without this, nobody gets on site. The attachment was titled regulations on site access for contractors, and section seven dealt with foreign workers. In the morning Olena, who runs client projects at WORKIN, printed the section and underlined three sentences: the list of documents for each foreign worker, scans due no later than two working days before the first day, and the rule that no pass is issued without a complete file.

The subcontractor had won a tender for the concrete frame of two sections of a housing development on Kyiv's left bank. Its own crew was busy on another site, and the new one needed sixteen people: ten steel fixers and six concreters with high-rise experience. The main contractor set the subcontractor's first day on site for ten weeks' time. The director did not know where to find the people and asked us to propose a solution.

Who is needed

10 steel fixers and 6 concreters

Project

Concrete frame for two sections of a housing development

First day

In ten weeks, date set by the main contractor

Access condition

A file for every foreign worker, scans two working days ahead

02 / Why Azerbaijan

Baku's concrete high-rises, Russian in the crews and a visa-free route

We compared countries on four criteria. Experience: a concrete frame means reading reinforcement drawings and working at height, and such people are found where a lot is built upwards. Language: the subcontractor's site manager speaks Ukrainian and Russian. Timing: ten weeks to the first day, the last two of which we wanted to keep for the files and access. Reserves: sixteen people plus a few more from the same selection.

Azerbaijan met these conditions best. Baku and Sumgait have built a great many concrete residential blocks in recent years, and some builders have also worked on sites in Turkey and Georgia, so they are used to modern sites and safety requirements. Crew leads usually speak Russian, Azerbaijani citizens enter Ukraine without a visa, and the visa-free route takes four to seven weeks on average. Uzbekistan would have offered more people, but its strength is volume roles in factories and warehouses, while the D visa route from India, eight to twelve weeks, would have eaten the whole margin for site access.

We proposed Azerbaijan, and the subcontractor agreed with one request: before the first day, look at the main contractor's requirements as carefully as at the candidates.

03 / Selection

A reinforcement drawing on the screen in a partner's office in Sumgait

Elchin, our worker relations manager for Azerbaijan, started selection with a licensed partner in Baku and Sumgait in week one. The partner collected forty applications, and twenty-three people reached interview. Elchin spoke to each in Azerbaijani and Russian and asked not about years of experience but about sites: how many storeys, who ran the site, what photos and videos of their work they could show on their phone.

The final part was run by the subcontractor's site manager over video. On the screen in the partner's office he showed a section of a slab reinforcement drawing and asked each steel fixer to describe what he saw: bar diameter and spacing, where the extra reinforcement goes around openings, how the cover is kept. He asked the concreters how to place and compact concrete where the reinforcement is densest. Five minutes over a drawing separated someone who had tied cages from someone who had stood next to one.

The site manager approved sixteen people and three reserves. Rashad is forty-one, from Sumgait, with seventeen years on Baku's concrete blocks, and he was the first to spot the opening where the site manager had deliberately left out the extra bars. Tural is twenty-four, a concreter from Ganja going abroad for the first time: his mother and fiancée are waiting at home, and the wedding is set for the autumn. Namik, a thirty-six-year-old steel fixer from Lankaran, had spent three years on housing sites in Istanbul and read the drawing more confidently than he spoke Russian.

Before departure everyone received an information sheet in Azerbaijani and Russian: the employer is the subcontractor, not the main contractor; the site and dormitory addresses; the job title and contract term; which documents to bring; and what would happen in the first days after arrival. The workers signed powers of attorney for their tax numbers at a notary in Baku before leaving. Elchin also explained what the file is and why the first day on site would not be the morning after the border: four days of signatures and queues are easier when you know what they are for.

04 / The file

Five pages per worker and where each one comes from

The main contractor's list looked short: passport with translation, permit, employment contract, residence permit, registration of residence. Nataliia, our Head of Documents, set it out differently: not what goes in the file but where each page comes from and on which day it appears. That made the key point visible. The first two documents can be prepared before entry, while the last three appear only after the border: the contract is signed in Ukraine, and the residence permit and registration filings are made with the signed contract.

So a complete file cannot exist before the fourth day after arrival, and the access team wants scans two working days before the first day. We counted the calendar back from the turnstile: Wednesday, the first day; the previous Thursday, scans; Wednesday and Thursday, filings for residence permits and registration of residence; Tuesday, contracts; Monday, the border. Friday stayed free as a margin. That is also why we set the entry date not straight after the permits but nine days before the first day: any earlier and people would be waiting in the dormitory, any later and the files would not be ready.

05 / Agreement

A residence permit card that never exists within four days

In week three Olena and Elchin went to site to meet Iryna, head of the main contractor's access team. Iryna has been letting contractors' people on to building sites for ten years and has seen files missing half their pages. The conversation was not about exceptions but about how her list fits real timescales.

The first question was the residence permit. In practice it takes three to five weeks from filing to card, so on day one nobody in the crew would have a card. Working while the card is being made is allowed as long as the work permit is valid and the stay is lawful. We proposed putting the filing confirmation in the file and adding a copy of the card as soon as it is issued. Iryna agreed on one condition: copies of all sixteen cards had to arrive within six weeks.

The second question was the employer. The access team checks that the permit was issued to the very subcontractor the main contractor has a contract with. The law is clear here: a foreign worker working for an employer other than the one named in the permit, or on different terms, is grounds for revoking the permit and a fine of ten minimum wages per person. So both the permits and the pass list were in the subcontractor's name. What this leaves with the employer is summarised on the employer duties page.

The third question was format, which is where checks most often stumble. We agreed on this: one file per person as one PDF named with the surname in Latin script, pages in the order of the list, and the worker shows his original passport at the turnstile.

06 / Permits

Job titles that read the same in the permit, the contract and the pass list

In week one the subcontractor's HR department drafted the pass request for sixteen places and put all of them down as concrete workers. The work permit applications had two job titles, steel fixer and concreter, and those are what the access team would check against the work. We aligned the list: each job title is written the same way in the application, the permit, the contract, the pass list and the information sheet. If a job title changes later, the employer applies to amend the permit within 30 days. How mismatched job titles affect permits is covered in the scenario on job titles at a plumbing contractor.

Names came from each candidate's record: in Latin script exactly as in the passport, and in Ukrainian as in the passport translation and the application. The main contractor wanted both spellings on the pass list, and they matched the permits letter for letter. The subcontractor filed the applications in week four, and the decision came within seven working days. The law allows the employment contract to be signed no later than 90 calendar days from the permit's issue date, and in our calendar the contracts were signed in week nine. The three reserves' documents were ready: had anyone dropped out, the gap between permits and entry left time to file for a replacement.

1. Weeks 1-2

   Selection in Baku and Sumgait, the drawing with the site manager, 16 people and 3 reserves.

2. Week 3

   Passport translations, powers of attorney, agreement with the access team.

3. Weeks 4-5

   16 applications, permits in the subcontractor's name, dormitory checked.

4. Week 9

   Border, contracts, residence permit and registration filings, file scans.

5. Week 10

   Access team check and the first day on site.

07 / Arrival

Nine days between the border and the turnstile

The crew reached a neighbouring country and at 5:50 on the Monday of week nine crossed the land border. Elchin met them on the Ukrainian side of the crossing. Everyone carried a passport, a copy of the permit, the subcontractor's invitation and proof of housing, and everyone gave the purpose of the trip as it was: work under a permit. We had prepared the dormitory under living support: rooms for four, a kitchen, a laundry room and a bus to site, and its documents, together with the owner's written consent, had been checked back in week five.

1. Monday

   Border at 5:50, the drive, moving into rooms assigned before arrival.

2. Tuesday

   Employment contracts at the subcontractor's office, Elchin translating every clause. Tax numbers already done.

3. Wednesday

   The first eight file for residence permits, with registration of residence filed at the same time.

4. Thursday

   The second eight. In the evening, sixteen files on the dormitory kitchen table; scans with the access team at 21:30.

5. Friday

   Contract copies filed with the employment centre within the 10-day term. The spare day was not needed.

6. Monday and Tuesday

   The access team checks the files. One request: a clearer scan of Tural's registration confirmation.

08 / Day one

At the turnstile at 7:10

At 7:10 on Wednesday sixteen people in the subcontractor's new hard hats stood at the turnstile with Elchin and the site manager. An engineer from the access team came out with a tablet already showing the scans and asked them to step forward one at a time in list order. She looked at each face and the passport photo, checked the surname against the pass, asked the job title and nodded when the person gave the same one as in the permit.

Rashad went through first and waited on the other side for the rest. Namik gave his job title in Russian, a little more slowly than the others, and the engineer only asked him to repeat his surname. Tural went last, gripping his passport so tightly that Elchin quietly reminded him to breathe out. At 7:48 the turnstile let the sixteenth person through. The files stayed in the subcontractor's site office and with the access team, the work on the sections is run by the subcontractor, and we look after the crew's documents under migration support.

09 / Summary

Sixteen passes and files that stay current after day one

Country

Azerbaijan, visa-free, 16 people and 3 reserves

Selection

Reinforcement drawing and the site manager's approval

File

5 pages per worker, scans two working days ahead

Agreement

Filing confirmation instead of the card, card copies within six weeks

Access

16 of 16 on day one

The first residence permit cards were issued four weeks after filing, the last a week later. Elchin replaced the page in each file as soon as the card was in hand, and the sixteenth copy reached Iryna before the agreed six weeks were up.

A main contractor's check is not an obstacle if you prepare for it from the first day of the project: we count the calendar back from the turnstile, agree the list with whoever will do the checking, and put in the file only what matches the permit letter for letter. The WORKIN replacement guarantee applies for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are kept: if anyone in the crew needs replacing, the new person comes from the reserves of the same selection, and we build their file from the same list. How a foreign company brings its own crew to a building site is covered in the scenario on seconded steel erectors from Turkey, and how to check skills before filing in the scenario on welders from Azerbaijan. The company's documents for filing follow the company checklist, and the whole route is on the How it works page. More on workers for construction, builders from abroad and workers from Azerbaijan.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers