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How to Build a Crew Travel Policy for Field Teams (2026 Guide)

Dec 29, 2025

Whether you’re revising an outdated travel document or building a crew travel policy from scratch, having a clear, enforceable framework is essential for companies managing field-based teams.

Unlike corporate travel, workforce travel is operational, remote, and constantly changing. Crews move between job sites, work rotating shifts, and often travel to regions with limited lodging availability and higher safety risks. Without a purpose-built policy, travel becomes reactive: costs rise, admin workloads balloon, and duty-of-care gaps appear.

At LodgeLink, we work with construction, energy, and infrastructure teams across North America every day. The companies that perform best in the field all have one thing in common: a workforce travel policy that reflects how crews actually operate on the ground.

This step-by-step guide walks through how to create a practical workforce travel policy that protects your people, controls costs, and supports the realities of remote and industrial work.

Step 1:
Identify Your Challenges & Set Strategic Goals

Let’s start with why you’re creating or updating your crew travel policy.

Gather input from key stakeholders to understand where travel breaks down today:

Accounting: Spending hours reconciling manual hotel folios, missing receipts, or inconsistent invoices
Operations: Struggling to secure crew lodging in high-demand regions like the Permian Basin, oil sands, or major construction corridors
Health & Safety: Managing fatigue, long commutes, and risk exposure in remote locations
Project Management: Losing visibility into where crews are staying, arriving, or rotating

We see these exact breakdowns when teams come to us for help: uncontrolled lodging spend, disconnected approvals, and no real visibility into where crews are staying week to week.

Your policy should directly address these pain points with clear, implementable rules, not vague guidance.

Step 2:
Define Budget Limits & Regional Cost Controls

Crew travel costs vary dramatically by region, season, and project type. A one-size-fits-all nightly rate rarely works for workforce travel.

Your policy should include:

Regional spending caps: Set different limits for urban hubs versus remote industrial zones
Clear inclusions/exclusions: Define what the company covers (room, tax, parking, Wi-Fi) and what it doesn’t (personal incidentals)
Advance booking requirements: Mandate booking 4–6 weeks ahead during peak seasons to secure availability and preferred rates

This prevents confusion, reduces reimbursement disputes, and protects project margins.

Step 3:
Establish Centralized Booking & Approval Workflows

Step 4:
Incorporate Duty of Care & Risk Management

Step 5:
Set Remote Worker Accommodation Guidelines

Standard business travel rules don’t work for field crews.

Your crew travel policy should prioritize accommodations that support safety, comfort, and productivity, including:

Truck and trailer parking
Kitchenettes or extended-stay options
On-site laundry
Quiet, shift-worker-friendly environments
Ground-floor or equipment-accessible rooms

Reducing long post-shift commutes is especially important for fatigue management and jobsite safety.

A fleet of trucks driving on a highway through a rural landscape, representing logistics and workforce transportation.

Step 6:
Plan for Change & Scalability

Construction, energy, and infrastructure projects rarely follow a straight line.

Your travel policy should account for:

Delays and scope changes
Weather disruptions
Crew rotations and staggered arrivals
Long-term stays that may need extensions

Build flexibility into your policy so crews aren’t penalized, and admin teams aren’t overwhelmed, when plans change.

Step 7:
Centralize Data & Reporting

A strong workforce travel policy doesn’t end at booking; it extends to visibility and reporting.

Your policy should require:

Centralized storage of bookings, itineraries, and invoices
Project codes for clean job costing
Reporting access for finance, operations, and leadership

This allows teams to forecast future needs, identify cost overruns early, and continuously improve travel efficiency.

Across thousands of workforce stays per month, we consistently see companies reduce travel administration by 40–60% once their workforce travel policy is paired with the right crew travel management platform.

A business professional looking at a large transparent digital display showing graphs and data visualizations against a city backdrop.

Protecting Your People and Your Bottom Line

So, how do you create an effective crew travel policy?

By building it around the realities of field work, not corporate assumptions, and by using tools designed specifically for workforce travel.

With LodgeLink, companies can enforce policy rules, simplify booking and invoicing, strengthen duty of care, and support crews wherever the job takes them.

If your crews are losing hours to commute time, your accounting team is buried in invoices, or your safety team lacks real travel visibility, your travel policy needs support from the right system.

Workforce travel may not be your core business, but managing it well can make or break your projects. See how modern workforce travel management actually works in the field.

FAQ: Workforce Travel Management

Q: What is a crew travel policy, and why do I need one?

A: A crew travel policy is a structured set of guidelines that governs how your field workers book and manage travel. Unlike a generic policy, it addresses the specific needs of remote projects, ensuring that costs are controlled and that workers stay in safe, vetted accommodations near the job site.

Q: How early should construction or energy crews book accommodations?

A: In high-demand regions like the Permian Basin or the Alberta Oil Sands, we recommend booking 4–6 weeks in advance. This secures availability during peak project seasons while ensuring you stay within your budget limits.

Q: How does LodgeLink simplify job costing for projects?

A: LodgeLink replaces the chaos of hundreds of individual hotel receipts with a single, consolidated invoice. Every stay can be tied to a specific Project Code, Cost Center, or Rig Number, making end-of-month reconciliation instant and accurate.

Q: Why is "windshield time" included in a safety policy?

A: "Windshield time" refers to the commute between the lodging and the job site. Reducing this time is critical for preventing fatigue-related accidents, especially for crews working 12-hour shifts. A good policy mandates lodging searched by GPS or LSD to minimize this drive.

Q: How can I manage room assignments for rotating crews (hitches)?

A: Avoid manual spreadsheets. Use a platform that supports bulk crew uploads, where you can assign names to rooms for an entire rotation in minutes. This ensures the right worker is in the right room, even when shifts (like day and night crews) overlap.

Q: What happens if a project timeline changes or a site shuts down?

A: Your policy should prioritize "build-for-change" flexibility. By using LodgeLink, you can modify, extend, or cancel bookings via the mobile app or desktop platform with 24/7 support, helping you avoid heavy penalties from traditional hotel blocks.

Q: What amenities are most important for remote worker accommodations?

A: Field crews typically require large truck parking, on-site laundry facilities, and kitchenettes for preparing their own meals. Additionally, night-shift workers need properties that offer a quiet, "day-sleeper" environment.

Q: Does a workforce travel policy help with OHS or COR audits?

A: Yes. By formalizing your Duty of Care standards, such as using traveller tracking and vetted accommodations, you provide the documentation necessary to prove you are meeting occupational health and safety regulations.