The Gas Ticket Expired Last Month. You Found Out on Site.

A ticket that lapsed last month is worth nothing on site this morning.

It is half seven, the van is loaded, and the gas engineer you sent to a commercial boiler swap gets turned around at the gate because his registration ran out three weeks ago. Nobody clocked it. The job slips, the client is unimpressed, and you are ringing round to find someone qualified who is free today.

Certifications and accreditations expire quietly. The renewal date sat in a spreadsheet nobody opened, or in an email from the training provider that scrolled off the screen back in March. By the time it surfaces, it is already a problem.

Why certificates slip through

Every engineer is on a different cycle. Gas registration, 18th Edition, IPAF, PASMA, asbestos awareness, first aid, ECS or CSCS — each renews on its own clock, and each person holds a different mix. Track that across ten engineers in a spreadsheet and you are maintaining dozens of dates by hand, hoping you remember to look before any of them lapse.

You usually find out one of two ways: an engineer is turned away on site, or a main contractor's QS asks for evidence of competency and you are digging through inboxes and a filing cabinet to produce a certificate you are not even sure is still in date.

See the whole team in one grid

A training matrix puts every person against every course in a single grid. Each cell is colour-coded by where that person stands: held and in date, expiring soon, expired, awaiting verification, in progress, or missing where the course is required. You stop reading down a spreadsheet column and start seeing your whole team's competency at a glance.

That one view answers the question you actually care about — who can I send to this job, today, without a problem at the gate.

A warning thirty days out, not a nasty surprise

Anything that expires carries a date. You can enter it straight from the certificate, or set a validity window in months on the course — a twelve-month ticket, say — and the system works the expiry out from the completion date for you.

From there it watches the clock. Inside thirty days of expiry, the cell turns amber and reads as expiring soon. Past the date, it goes to expired. Skills that do not expire simply stay held once they are signed off. The warning lands in the matrix where you are already looking, so a renewal is something you book in advance rather than scramble over after the fact.

Know who must hold what

Not every ticket matters for every person. Mark a course as required for a role or a trade, and the matrix flags anyone who is required to hold it but does not — as a missing cell, in plain sight. Gaps in mandatory training surface on the screen instead of on site, so you are not finding out that an engineer was never certified for the work after they have already done it.

Verified, not taken on trust

A certificate is only worth something if it is real. Records use a two-step sign-off: the engineer can acknowledge their own training and upload the certificate, and then a manager or assessor verifies it. A qualification only shows as held once that second step is done, so the matrix reflects what has been checked rather than what someone typed in. Existing qualifications, right-to-work, and insurance records can be brought across, so you are not starting from a blank grid.

Field Forge is the AI-native operating system for UK trade contractors. Start a free 30-day trial at fieldforge.io, or read more about the training and certification matrix.