Site Administrator

A Site Administrator handles the paperwork, records and coordination that keep a working site running - most commonly a construction site, but the title is also used on engineering, manufacturing, utilities and facilities sites. You sit in the site office (often a portable cabin) supporting the site manager and project team, logging deliveries and timesheets, booking inductions, chasing documents from subcontractors and keeping health and safety records straight. The job exists so that the people building or operating the site aren't buried in administration, and so the project can prove what happened when someone asks.

Starting salary: £22k–£28k
Live graduate jobs: 1 open now
Main way in: Direct application is by far the most common route
They usually ask for: No specific degree subject is required and many postholders…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £22,000–£28,000 to start, though this varies widely - London and major infrastructure projects pay noticeably more, smaller regional contractors less, and agency or fixed-term site roles are often quoted as a day or hourly rate instead.

What you'd actually do

Signing in visitors and contractors, running or booking site inductions (the short safety briefing everyone must do before going on site), and checking people's competence cards and certificates are valid before they're allowed to start work
Collecting and inputting timesheets, allocating hours to cost codes, and passing information to payroll or the commercial team so people and subcontractors get paid correctly
Logging deliveries and plant hire (machinery and equipment brought onto site), matching delivery notes against orders and flagging discrepancies to the buyer or quantity surveyor
Maintaining the document control system - making sure drawings, method statements and risk assessments on site are the current versions and that superseded ones are removed

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Keeping health, safety and environmental records up to date: toolbox talk sign-off sheets, accident and near-miss reports, equipment inspection records, waste transfer notes
Booking meeting rooms, taking and circulating minutes of site progress meetings, and handling the general running of the site office - stationery, PPE stock, welfare supplies, phone and IT issues
Being the first point of contact when someone phones or walks into the site office, and triaging who actually needs to deal with it

How graduates get in

Direct application is by far the most common route. Site Administrator posts are advertised openly and recruited on attitude, organisation and basic office skills rather than a specific degree, so graduates apply alongside non-graduates.
Temping through a recruitment agency, particularly construction and engineering specialists. Agencies place a lot of site-based admin on short contracts tied to the length of a project, and temp roles frequently convert to permanent or lead to the next project with the same contractor.
Internal moves within a contractor or housebuilder - starting in a head office admin, reception or document control role and transferring to site. Common, and often the fastest way in if you already work for the business.
Via a construction-related degree (construction management, civil engineering, quantity surveying, building surveying) where a graduate takes a site admin post to get onto a live project when graduate scheme places are scarce. This happens, but be clear with yourself and the employer that you want to move into a technical or management role, or you can get stuck.

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Apprenticeships in business administration or construction support, sometimes completed alongside the job. Less relevant if you already have a degree, but worth knowing that many of your colleagues will have come this way.
Graduate schemes rarely lead directly to this title. Large contractors do run graduate programmes, but those are usually badged as site management, engineering or commercial trainee rather than administrator.

What employers ask for

No specific degree subject is required and many postholders have no degree at all. Where a subject helps, it is construction management, civil engineering, business or quantity surveying - but employers are generally more interested in whether you can be organised and reliable under pressure.
Strong practical IT skills, especially Excel and Outlook. Many employers will also expect you to pick up a construction document management or project collaboration system quickly - these are the shared platforms where drawings and site records are stored.
A CSCS card is usually needed for construction sites (the Construction Skills Certification Scheme card proves you've passed a basic health and safety test). Employers often arrange and pay for this, but check - some expect you to have it already.
Previous administrative or customer-facing experience is valued, including retail, hospitality or office temping. Site experience is a bonus rather than a must.

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A driving licence and access to a car matter more than people expect, because sites are often on industrial estates or greenfield land with poor public transport, and you may be moved between sites.
Some employers ask for or offer an IOSH Working Safely or similar short safety course, and document controller roles sometimes want specific software familiarity. This varies a lot by employer and project size.

Skills that matter

Document version control

If a trade works from a superseded drawing because you filed it wrong, the work may have to be torn out and redone at real cost, so knowing exactly which revision is current is the core technical skill of the job.

Chasing people without annoying them

A large part of the week is getting subcontractors and suppliers to send certificates, insurance documents and timesheets they would rather not prioritise, and you have no authority over them.

Accuracy with records under time pressure

Safety records, inspection certificates and accident reports are legal documents that can be examined by the HSE or in an insurance claim years later, so gaps and errors are a genuine problem rather than a tidiness issue.

Spreadsheet competence beyond the basics

Allocating hours to cost codes, reconciling delivery notes and producing weekly reports is far faster and less error-prone if you can use lookups, filters and pivot tables.

Composure in a blunt, interruption-heavy environment

Site offices are noisy, people come in dirty, stressed and direct, and you will be interrupted constantly, so being unflappable matters more than polish.

Working out who actually needs to deal with something

You are the first point of contact for everything from a broken toilet to a delivery driver with no paperwork, and knowing whether this is the site manager's problem, the QS's or yours keeps the project moving.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Senior or lead Site Administrator on a larger project, or taking responsibility for admin across several sites for one contractor. Timeframes vary widely and often depend on project turnover rather than formal promotion cycles.
Document Controller - a more specialised version of the records side of the job, usually better paid and with a clearer career path on large infrastructure projects.
Sideways into a technical or commercial function: assistant quantity surveyor, planner, health and safety advisor or site engineer. This is realistic but usually needs a relevant qualification alongside, and employers vary enormously in how willing they are to fund or support that.
Project support officer, project coordinator or project administrator roles in construction, engineering or infrastructure, which move you towards programme and project management.
Office or business manager within a contractor, or a head-office role in HR, procurement or compliance, using the process knowledge you built on site. Timelines here are not conventional and depend heavily on the size of the employer.

What people get wrong

“It's a generic office admin job that happens to be located on a building site.”

A lot of the work is compliance and record-keeping that carries legal weight - safety documentation, competence checks, waste transfer notes - and the construction-specific knowledge you build is what makes the role transferable within the industry rather than outside it.

“You'll be out on the site looking at the building work.”

Most of your time is in the site office at a desk. You'll need a hard hat and boots to cross the site and you'll see the project progress, but this is not an outdoor job, and if you want to be out on site you should be aiming at engineering or site management instead.

“It's a dead end for a graduate.”

It can be if you let it, but it puts you inside a live project with direct contact with site managers, quantity surveyors and planners, and plenty of people use it to move into document control, project coordination or a technical route. The determining factor is usually whether you ask for and chase that move, because nobody will offer it automatically.

“The job is permanent and stable in one place.”

Site admin is often tied to a specific project, so when the project finishes the role may end or move to a new site potentially some distance away. Some contractors redeploy you, some hire on fixed-term or agency contracts - check which before accepting.

Where this varies

The title covers quite different jobs depending on where you land. On a large infrastructure or civils project you may be one of several administrators with a narrow remit, working to formal document control procedures and reporting to a project support manager. On a small housing or fit-out site you may be the only administrative person there, doing everything from payroll input to ordering the tea bags, reporting straight to the site manager. The title is also used outside construction - on manufacturing sites, utilities depots, waste and energy sites, and in facilities management - where the safety and contractor-control elements are similar but the drawings and commercial work are replaced by maintenance records, permits to work and visitor management. A few employers use "Site Administrator" to mean an IT systems administrator for a particular location or website, which is an entirely different job, so read the advert carefully.

See all 1 live Site Administrator jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.