Inspection reports, RI&E and construction drawings disposed of safely
A construction firm produces stacks of documents that, at first sight, look technical and unremarkable. Floor plans with vault locations. Electrical drawings with access routes. Inspection reports for lifts and cranes. RI&Es with risk analyses per workplace. Individually they look like dry documents, but together they form a handbook for anyone who knows your client's building or installations. Leaving them in the paper bin of the project office is therefore not an option. This article shows why and how you tackle it differently.
Target audience: project leaders, KAM coordinators and managers in construction and installation.
Why construction drawings are sensitive
A classic vulnerability in the construction chain: old drawings of office buildings, banks, data centres or shops that end up in residual waste on the street. What is on them:
- Vault and server-room locations, including construction and dimensions.
- Alarm and camera positions, cable routes.
- Access paths, emergency exits, technical rooms.
- Sometimes user names or codes in annotations.
For criminals wanting to scout a location, these are exactly the documents that would otherwise take a lot of effort to gather. The paper container behind the project office is sometimes an easy source.
A single left-behind construction drawing can facilitate a targeted burglary at the client. The responsibility of the construction firm does not end at handover.
RI&E and the Working Conditions Act
An RI&E (Risk Inventory and Evaluation) is mandatory under art. 5 of the Dutch Working Conditions Act. Current RI&Es should be available on the work floor. Old versions must be kept as long as they are functionally or legally relevant, but after that they have to go. An RI&E contains:
- Risk descriptions per workplace, sometimes with photos.
- Names of employees and their exposure profile.
- Measures, responsibles and timelines.
- Sometimes medical data from a PAGO or comparable examination.
Once an older version is no longer needed and no tax or legal retention obligation applies, GDPR storage limitation kicks in. Destruction is then not optional.
Inspection reports: lift, crane, electrical
Inspection reports (NEN 3140, NEN-EN 81 for lifts, TCVT for hoists) carry, per object, a minimum retention period as long as the object is in use, plus usually a few years after to underpin liability. Once the object is out of use and the periods have expired, the report has to go. Reasons:
- Detailed description of the installation, often with serial numbers and configuration.
- Names and qualifications of technicians, sometimes BIG or certificate numbers.
- Commercial indications about the client (where which equipment is located).
Subcontractors, freelancer files, payroll statements
Construction projects involve a lot of personnel documentation: copy-IDs (with BSN), VCA certificates, toolbox registrations, PPE-issue overviews, chain liability files. These documents contain personal data and sometimes special category data. After the project ends and the statutory retention period has run, they have to be destroyed in line with the GDPR standard, not as ordinary scrap paper.
On-site destruction
For construction firms, on-site destruction fits particularly well. The archive box with documents from a closed project leaves the business premises only as shreds. The shredder truck comes to the location, the operator accompanies the process and you can watch via camera or side window. Pluses for this sector:
- Ample access and parking on most contractor sites.
- Archive often already at the edge of the site or in the warehouse.
- Combined destruction of paper and media in a single session possible.
- Direct handover of the certificate for the KAM file and quality system.
We work out the trade-off between mobile and offsite in our article Mobile shredding versus offsite.
Clearing the company archive or vacating the project office?
We come with a mobile shredder to the site. Drawings, RI&Es, inspection reports and personnel files go straight into the shredder. DIN 66399 P-5, certificate per job. Within 20 km of Amsterdam-Noord.
Request a quoteStandard and certificate
For construction drawings, inspection reports and RI&Es, DIN 66399 P-5 is the appropriate level: particles small enough to make any coherence impossible, also for structured documents such as large-format drawings. For media found on site (old laptops from the project office, USB sticks with revision drawings), H-4 or E-4 is the standard. The certificate states method, volume and date, and fits straight into the project file or the KAM system.
Background on our service for construction firms is on the construction firms industry page. Read also about UAV-GC files after handover.
Summary: construction drawings, RI&Es and inspection reports do not belong in the general paper stream. On-site destruction keeps the chain short, combines occupational, GDPR and corporate security requirements and gives you a certificate for the file immediately.