The decision to put a crew in one house together gets a lot of attention. What happens on the Tuesday of week three, when one person has been on nights, another has used all the milk, and the van is blocking the drive, gets none. That is where sharing succeeds or fails.
This guide starts after the decision. It assumes you have already worked out that this crew should share, and that the people going have been asked rather than told. If you have not got that far yet, the project-team guide has the crew version of that decision and the welfare guide has the HR version, and both are short.
What follows is the practical part: rooms, shifts, the handful of house rules worth writing down, the person who would rather not, what to tell whoever is arranging the accommodation, and what to do when it stops working.
Rooms: decide before anyone arrives
Much of the friction in a shared house is about rooms, and much of it is avoidable by settling four things before the first person unpacks.
Give every person a room that is theirs
A shared house works when the sharing is the kitchen and the sofa, not the bedroom. If the property has fewer bedrooms than people, that is a different arrangement and everyone going needs to know it before they say yes.
Decide who gets which room before the first night
The larger room, the one over the kitchen, the one by the front door: left to chance, the first person through the door takes the best one and the last person in resents it for ten weeks. Draw lots, go by seniority, go by who is staying longest, but decide.
Ask about the bathrooms, not just the bedrooms
Five people and one bathroom on a six-thirty start is a queue every morning. Ask how many there are and whether any bedroom has its own, and match that against what time people actually leave for site.
Find out where people can be alone
A second sitting room, a desk in a bedroom, a garden: somewhere that is not the shared space matters more the longer the stay runs. If the answer is nowhere, the stay needs to be short or the crew needs to be one that genuinely likes each other.
Shifts, noise and the front door
A crew on one shift pattern can share almost anywhere. A crew on two cannot share just anywhere, and the difference is not the people, it is the building. Somebody coming in at two in the morning past a bedroom door, a shower running at five, a kettle at midnight: none of it is anyone’s fault and all of it wears people down.
If the job runs days and nights, say so before a property is chosen, and ask specific questions about it: which bedrooms are furthest from the front door and the bathroom, whether the kitchen is under a bedroom, whether the night worker can have the room that gets least daylight. If the honest answer is that no layout makes it work, that is the point at which the night worker gets a separate room somewhere else, and it is cheaper to know now.
One more thing about the front door: agree how many keys there are and who holds them on day one. A crew of five with three keys spends the first week texting each other from the doorstep.
House rules that are worth writing down, and the ones that are not
Adults do not need a rota on the fridge. They do need six things agreed once, out loud, before day one, because every one of them is an argument in week three if it is left to be discovered.
Agree before day one
- Who buys the shared basics, tea, milk, washing-up liquid, and how the money is squared up.
- Which nights the kitchen is one meal for everyone and which nights are every person for themselves.
- Quiet hours, in actual times, agreed against the earliest start in the house.
- The washing machine: whose day is whose, or a rule that it is emptied within the hour.
- Who takes the bins out and on which day, because nobody is told and everybody assumes.
- Visitors: whether they are fine, and what notice the rest of the house gets.
Leave alone
- What people do in their own room with the door shut.
- Whether somebody eats with the group or on their own; it changes week to week and it is not a problem.
- How tidy a bedroom is, provided nothing is escaping into the shared space.
- What time people go to sleep, once the quiet hours are respected.
- Anything you would not put in writing for your own house.
The bins deserve a special mention. Which day they go out, and which bin, is the thing nobody thinks to tell a crew and the thing the neighbours notice first. Put it in the arrival message.
The person who would rather not
On many crews there is one. Sometimes they say so when asked, sometimes it comes out in week two, and sometimes it never gets said and simply shows up as somebody who eats in their room and drives home every Friday lunchtime.
Whether people can be required to share is a question for your own HR policy and, if there is any doubt, your own legal advice, and nothing here is an answer to it. What we can say from arranging stays is practical: the person who would rather not is not being difficult, the reason is not your business, and a separate room for one person is less trouble than three months of managing the alternative. Ask once, accept the answer, and tell whoever is arranging the accommodation so the requirement is right from the start rather than corrected later.
What to tell the supplier
A shared house is a different requirement from the same number of people in separate rooms, and whoever is arranging it can only match what you describe. Six things, in this order.
- That the crew will share, and that this is decided rather than assumed. It changes which properties are suitable and it is the first thing worth saying.
- How many people, how many need their own bedroom, and whether anybody needs a ground-floor room or a bathroom of their own.
- The shift pattern, including whether anybody is on nights, because a house that suits five day workers may not suit four days and one night.
- The vehicles, described as what they are: two vans with racks and a car is a parking question a supplier can actually answer.
- Who the one contact is on your side, so that a problem with the boiler goes to somebody who can act on it rather than to whoever answered the phone.
- What would rule a place out for this crew specifically: no parking for the vans, a long walk to the nearest shop, a bathroom count that does not work with the start time.
That list is a good part of a whole brief. The rest of it, and an example you can copy, is in how to brief an accommodation supplier so the first answer is useful.
When it stops working
It will not announce itself. The signs are small: somebody stops eating with the others, the kitchen is suddenly very clean or very much not, two people are always out at the same time, or the Friday departures get earlier. None of it is a crisis and all of it is worth a conversation before it becomes one.
Ask in week two, not at the end, and ask specific things rather than “how is it going”: the welfare guide has the four questions worth asking. The answers tend to be one room, one shift clash or one habit, and those can be fixed without moving anyone. If it really is the sharing itself, say so to whoever arranged the accommodation the same day. A change with three weeks of notice is a conversation; a change with three days is a scramble.
Common questions
What if one person changes their mind after a week?
Take it seriously and take it early. Ask what specifically is not working, because the answer is often one thing rather than the whole arrangement. If it really is the sharing itself, raise it with whoever arranged the accommodation straight away: a change in week two is easier to make than a change in week eight, and a crew member who has quietly decided to go home at the weekend and not come back is a bigger problem than a second booking.
Should the crew have a say in which property?
A say, yes; a vote, probably not. Ask the people going what would make the difference to them, which is usually a short list, and give it to whoever is arranging it. Then decide. A crew that was asked and then told the answer accepts it far more readily than one that was handed a postcode.
Does sharing change what the supplier needs to know?
It changes almost everything they need to know, which is why it belongs at the top of the brief rather than in a follow-up. Bedroom count, bathroom count, parking, the shift pattern and the length of stay are all read differently once a supplier knows the crew is sharing. Our guide on how to brief an accommodation supplier covers the rest of the brief.
Do you arrange shared houses for crews?
Yes, for crews working across the UK, and a shared house is exactly the kind of requirement to send us. Tell us the site postcode, the headcount, the dates, the shift pattern and the vehicles, and you will get a straight answer about what we can do.
In short
Give everyone their own room and decide who gets which before the first night. Match the building to the shift pattern, not the other way round. Agree six things out loud and leave the rest alone. Take the person who would rather not at their word. Tell the supplier the crew is sharing before you tell them anything else. Ask how it is going in week two.
If you would rather hand the whole thing to somebody, that is what we do. How it works covers the process end to end.
A crew to house?
Send the headcount, the dates, the shift pattern and the vehicles, and say whether the crew is sharing. That is enough to come back with real options.
If we cannot cover it, you will get a straight answer rather than a holding email.