AIPR designer, supervisor or operator: which profile for which role?

Picking the wrong AIPR profile costs twice: once when paying for an unnecessary examination, and again when an inspection reveals that an employee is supervising without being authorised to. The order of 22 December 2015 defines three functions, and the assignment turns on what the person actually does, not on their job title.

The three profiles, in site order

The profiles map onto three distinct moments in a works operation.

The designer (concepteur) acts upstream, before the first excavator arrives. This is the person who prepares the project, consults the one-stop portal, files the works declarations, analyses the network operators’ replies and decides which technical measures apply. Their examination covers that declaration procedure at length, along with the accuracy classes of location data and the respective responsibilities of the parties.

The supervisor (encadrant) runs the execution. Site manager, works supervisor, team leader: they receive the plans and the ground marking, organise the work accordingly and decide when something does not add up. Their competence concerns interpreting the ground and knowing what to do on an unexpected discovery or a gap between document and reality.

The operator (opérateur) carries out the works: excavator, mini-excavator or trencher driver, groundworker, and also anyone working by hand in the immediate vicinity of a network. Their examination is the shortest and most operational — safety distances, gentle techniques, what to do if a network is damaged.

Role by role: where everyone fits

Role	AIPR profile	Watch out for
Client, project manager	Designer	Including local authorities and technical departments
Project engineer, draughtsman, surveyor	Designer	Often forgotten — “never goes on site”
Works supervisor, site manager	Supervisor	Designer also works, if already held
Team leader	Supervisor	Covers occasional plant driving
Earthmoving plant operator	Operator	Check the CACES® already held first
Groundworker, network layer	Operator	Manual work nearby is covered

The gaps almost always sit on the designer side. A civil engineering firm naturally equips its plant operators, because the topic feels operational — and leaves unauthorised the office-based person who files the declarations, even though the scheme covers them fully.

The overlap rule: fewer examinations to fund

One principle greatly simplifies managing multi-skilled teams: a designer attestation covers the supervisor and operator roles, and a supervisor attestation covers the operator role. The progression runs downwards, never upwards.

Two practical consequences follow.

First, for an employee holding several roles — common in small firms, where the owner designs, supervises and drives — a single designer attestation is enough. Funding three examinations would be pure waste.

Second, on promotion. An operator becoming a team leader must sit a fresh examination at supervisor level: the original attestation does not travel up with them. That belongs in the skills development plan, alongside the other regulatory authorisations that accompany a change of role.

Beware, though, of over-qualifying out of caution. The designer examination covers an administrative procedure that field staff do not practise: sending an experienced excavator driver into it markedly raises the risk of failure, for no benefit if the role does not require it.

The profile attaches to the function, not the org chart

A company remains free to organise itself, and it is the reality of the work that determines the profile. Three situations recur.

The agency worker. The proof of competence belongs to the worker and follows them; the AIPR is signed by the employer — so by the temporary work agency, consistently with the assignment. The user company has every interest in checking the document is there before the worker arrives on site.

The subcontractor. Each company issues authorisations for its own employees. The principal does not sign AIPRs for a third party’s teams, but may legitimately require them to be produced under its prevention plan.

The multi-skilled employee. One employee may fall under different profiles depending on the site. Here the highest attestation solves the problem, thanks to the overlap rule.

Local authorities deserve a special mention, because they often combine all three profiles within a small headcount. The technical services manager who reviews projects and files declarations is a designer; the officer running a highways direct-labour team is a supervisor; the one driving the backhoe loader is an operator. Where those three roles are held by only two or three people, aiming for designer level across the department’s management simplifies things lastingly — provided the level is understood to cover administrative subject matter, and candidates are prepared accordingly.

One last case is worth settling in advance: the employee who works near a network only exceptionally, a few days a year. The scheme sets no frequency threshold. As soon as the function falls within one of the three definitions, the authorisation is required, including for a one-off operation.

What coordination between parties really changes

Having three profiles is not administrative refinement: it reflects the fact that damaging a network almost always results from a chain, not an isolated gesture.

A study by Ahmed Jalil Al-Bayati and Louis Panzer, published in 2020 in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, examines precisely the importance of stakeholders’ behaviours in reducing damage to buried utilities (see the study). The message fits the French split: prevention rests not on a single link but on the articulation between the party who designs, the party who supervises and the party who digs. A designer who neglects the quality of location data passes on a problem that the operator, however competent, will discover too late.

That is the best justification for the designer profile, often seen as the least necessary when it in fact determines the quality of everything that follows.

Take action

Take your org chart and ask one question per line: does this person prepare works, supervise them, or carry them out? The profile follows from the answer. Before ordering any session, check what each already holds — a CACES® bearing the relevant statement or an attestation at a higher level may be enough. The full scheme page for the AIPR recaps the profiles, the overlap rule and the accepted equivalents; for the employer-versus-attestation mechanism, the article on the duty that falls on the employer goes further.