Work Order

About this template

When to use it

A one-page instruction the person ordering the work hands to the person doing it. It suits jobs where misreading the scope causes an injury or a redo — equipment maintenance, facility repair, installation and removal. That is why the three items run scope, then safety, then completion.

It is not a record written after the job. It is filled in and handed over before work starts, which the label above the title says outright: “Work order · return to the issuer once the job is done”.

What is in the file

• A four-cell header table — Work date · Work area · Issuer / Job supervisor · Order No. — with “2026-04-18 (Fri)”, “○○ Plant, Bldg 2, compressor room”, a team and two names, and WO-2026-0418-03.
• One gray line: “Complete it in order, from Job summary and scope through Records and return of the order.”
• Three numbered items: 1. Job summary and scope / 2. Safety measures and protective equipment / 3. Completion criteria and handover.
• A Key metrics table: People staffed 4 · Planned hours 8 hours · Target output 120 · Scheduled date 2026-04-18.
• A Confirmation and approval table with three boxes — Issuer, Job supervisor, Safety sign-off.

Filling order

1. The order number mixes a date and a sequence, WO-2026-0418-03. Several jobs on one day are told apart by that last pair of digits.
2. 1. Job summary and scope — write what is included and, just as important, “What this order covers and what it excludes”. Skip the exclusions and the scope grows on site. Naming the equipment number stops anyone opening the wrong machine.
3. 2. Safety measures and protective equipment — only what must be finished before work begins. The sample carries “Power isolated, lockout and tagout (LOTO) applied”. Say who hangs the tag and who removes it.
4. 3. Completion criteria and handover — what someone must see to call it done. Give measured values as numbers, and where a test run is needed, name who must witness it.
5. Replace the four Key metrics cells. Where there is no countable output, reuse the Target output cell for a quantity or a section of plant.
6. In the approval table, Safety sign-off is signed before work starts. Collected afterwards in a batch, that box means nothing.

Forms that belong beside it

• Hot work, confined space work and work at height need a separate work permit. This order does not replace one.
• Keep the pre-job hazard review in the Risk Assessment Checklist and the during-and-after walk in the Safety Inspection Log, so no single sheet tries to do all three jobs.
• Attach drawings, specifications and the material safety data sheets, and list them under item 1.

How to use the four metrics

• People staffed times planned hours gives man-hours. Four people over 8 hours is 32 man-hours; where that drifts far from reality, the estimating basis for the next order needs fixing.
• Target output belongs in countable units. Write the unit with the number — pieces, meters, units — or it cannot be used to judge completion.
• If the Scheduled date and the header Work date differ, the job was postponed. Add one line under item 3 saying why.

One job per sheet

Bundling dissimilar jobs onto one order mixes the safety measures and the completion criteria together. Different area or different hazard type means a separate order number and a separate sheet.

Common mistakes

• Widening the scope verbally. Extra work is safer taken back to the issuer for written approval and reissued as a new order.
• Leaving clean-up and waste disposal out of the completion criteria. The next shift inherits them.
• The worker walking off with the order and never returning it — which is exactly what the label above the title asks for.
• Carrying on when the drawing and the site disagree. Stopping and reporting is following the order, not breaking it.