Crew & qualifications

Keep a roster of everyone who works on the equipment, set their labor terms, and record who is designated to do what.

Click Crew in the sidebar (under Admin). The roster is everyone who does work — paid staff, volunteers, and contractors — whether or not they ever sign in. An app account is a separate thing layered on top, and most of a railroad's roster will never need one.

This separation matters because work attributes to roster people. A volunteer who spent forty hours on a firebox needs to appear in the labor history and the grant report; they do not need a password.

The roster holds people's contact details, pay terms, and qualifications, so out of the box only administrators can open it. An administrator can let general members view or change it on Settings & permissions. Everyone can still pick roster people on hours, crew, and inspection forms.

Crew Roster on its Roster tab, with counts for people on the roster, app accounts and certify authority, and a table of crew members showing roles, whether they have a login, and hours logged

The page has two tabs: Roster, the people, and Certifications, who holds what and what lapses next (see The Certifications tab).

Adding a person

The Add a crew member panel beside the roster is the short form: Full name, Roles (comma-separated, such as Engineer, Boilersmith), Email, Phone, and a Certify authority checkbox. Click Add to roster. + Add Person at the top opens the full form, and Edit on a person's page reopens it:

Status — Active or Inactive. Former crew stay on the roster; their history has to remain answerable.
Can certify — the marker showing this person holds officer authority to sign off inspections at your railroad in real life. The app's sign-off permission is granted separately, on their account.
Notes.

Labor terms

Every form that logs hours — on a work order, an inspection, or a run — asks only who, which day, and how long. Everything else comes from the person's Labor terms on the roster:

Hours are logged as — volunteer, paid staff, or contractor.
Hourly rate — in dollars per hour. For paid staff and contractors, enter what they are paid. For a volunteer, leave it blank to value their time at the Independent Sector volunteer rate for the year worked, or enter a documented market rate for a skilled volunteer — a volunteer boilersmith valued at boilersmith wages. A volunteer can be valued higher than the Independent Sector rate, never lower.
Rate basis — the documentation behind a rate above the Independent Sector rate, for example "BLS welder median 2026". Federal grant rules (2 CFR 200.306(b)) expect a stated basis, not a number someone picked.

Each hours entry is stamped with the rate in force on the day it was logged, so a later raise changes hours logged from then on and never rewrites history. The roster list shows each person's terms in its Labor terms column, and hours forms label each name with them — "volunteer · $36.14/hr", for example — so you can see what an entry will record before you save it.

The roster page

The list shows each person's roles, whether they hold an app account, their labor terms, their total hours logged, and their status. Three counters across the top summarize the roster: how many people are on it, how many have accounts, and how many hold certify authority.

Open a person for their page: contact details, their hours with the value of each entry and a link back to the work order, inspection, or run it came from, their qualifications, any certifications they have shared with your railroad, and a Record history panel showing every change made to their record.

Qualifications and designations

RailCompliant does not issue certifications. What it records is the shape the regulations actually use: a designation, the evidence behind it, and an expiry. Section 229.21 requires that daily inspections be done by a designated qualified person — the designation record is the compliance evidence.

Grant one from the Qualifications & designations panel on a person's page:

Qualification — pick a type. The list follows FRA vocabulary: Designated daily inspector (49 CFR 229.21 / 230.13), Competent 31/92-SD inspector (230.14–.15), Periodic inspection supervisor (229.23(e)), Brake inspector (232.711), Locomotive engineer (Part 240), Conductor (Part 242), and First aid / CPR.
Granted — the date the designation was made.
Expires — leave blank to use the type's default validity period.
Granted by — the person who made the designation.
Basis — the evidence line, in your own words. "OJT with J. Smith, 40 hrs" is the shape to aim for.

Click Grant / renew. Revoke ends an active designation; the record stays as history.

Renewing never deletes. The previous designation flips to expired and a new row is added, so the question an inspector actually asks — "was this person designated on the day they signed this?" — always has an answer. Records for former crew persist for the same reason.

Click Wallet card for a printable card of a person's active designations, sized to carry.

As designations approach expiry, RailCompliant emails administrators a digest and raises an alert once one is close to lapsing or has lapsed. Both are configurable — see Notifications.

The Certifications tab

The Certifications tab on the Crew page shows the whole active roster's designations at once, so you can see a lapse coming before anyone works without one.

The Certifications tab: counts of designations in force, expiring within 60 days, expired, and shared by crew; What expires next, listing each lapsed or due certification soonest first; and Who holds what, a grid of people against every designation with each cell marked by its expiry

Four counts: designations in force, those expiring within 60 days, those already expired, and certificates crew have shared with you.
What expires next: everything expired or due within 60 days, soonest first, each marked as your railroad designation or shared from My Career. A name opens the person's page.
Who holds what: everyone on the active roster against every designation anyone holds. Each cell shows the expiry, green when it is current, amber within 60 days, red once it has lapsed, and no expiry for designations that don't run out. The last column counts the certificates the person shares, with the first to expire.

A designation that lapsed stays on the tab, in red, until you renew it; one you revoked on purpose is left off. A link to /crew#certifications opens this tab directly.

Crew members with a login keep their own certifications — CPR cards, boiler courses, welding tickets, medicals — on My Career. When one of them chooses to share a certification with your railroad, it appears on their roster page under Certifications shared with you, with its issuer, expiry, and any photo or PDF of the document.

Use a shared certification as evidence when you record a designation. The designation is your railroad's own record; the certification stays the crew member's, and they can stop sharing it at any time.

Crew history to verify

Crew members with a login, and former members whose login you revoked, can ask your railroad to verify entries of their own history — shifts and trips from their career log, and periods of past service they typed or imported on My Career. When one does, administrators (and members whose role can change the crew roster) are notified, and History to verify on the Crew page shows how many entries are waiting.

The page lists each request with the person's name and note (and Former member, until the date they left, for someone who has left), and only the entries they sent: the date or period, railroad, position, locomotive and hours. Beside each one, Your records shows what your railroad logged for that person on that day — hours and their kind, and runs they crewed with the role and locomotive — or in that period, when their login is, or was, connected to their roster entry.

Verify all, or tick entries and Verify selected, for what your records or your knowledge support.
Tick entries, give a reason, and Decline selected for the rest. The person sees the reason, corrects the entry, and can ask again. You can't change their numbers.
Under Answered, the menu on a verified entry withdraws the verification, with a reason the person sees.

You can't answer a request of your own; someone else who manages the crew roster does. Seeing the page needs View on the Crew roster area of Settings and permissions, and answering needs Change; both are administrators' unless your railroad turns them on for members. Every answer and withdrawal goes on your railroad's audit trail with the values verified.

Crew history to verify: a former volunteer's entries, marked Former member, beside the railroad's own records for each day, with Verify all, Verify selected and Decline selected

Linking a crew account

Most of a roster never needs a login, but the people on it can still have a free RailCompliant crew account. The Crew account link panel on a person's page invites them to link it to their roster entry: check the email (it starts with the roster's) and click Invite to link. They get an email; without an account yet, it asks them to make a free one with that address. You see Invited, then Linked, or Declined. Send again and Withdraw invitation work while it's open, and End link stops it later. Inviting and ending need Change on the Crew roster, and each is on the person's audit trail.

A link opens nothing at your railroad and takes no seat. What it does: their My Career shows the hours, runs, inspections and designations you record against this entry, marked as from your records, and they can send you crew history to verify. They can leave the link whenever they like. To let them sign in to your railroad, give them a login as below.

The App account panel on a person's page is where an administrator grants access: an email address, a role, and optionally certifying authority. The person receives a link to choose their own password — nobody shares credentials. Once they have an account, the same panel is where an administrator changes their role, certify authority, and purchase-approval authority, or revokes their access. Certifying authority granted here is what the approval chain checks when routing an inspection for signature.

Full detail is in Users & access.