# Approving work

How approval works, and what to check before you approve a booking on a contested zone.

Approving a work activity is what turns a request into a commitment. It is also what makes the
exclusion-zone clash rules bite, so it is worth understanding what your approval does.

## Who can approve

Approval needs the **approve work activities** permission. Head Office and Project Supervisor both have
it; Subcontractor Supervisor and User do not. The full list is in
[Roles and permissions](/reference/roles-and-permissions/).

## What a high-risk booking shows you

High-risk work travels with the request into the queue. The card lists every type the crew selected,
and for Working at heights, Scaffolding and Precast concrete it also shows whether the exclusion zone
is large enough to contain dropped objects.

**Dropped objects contained: No** is not a rejection and not an error. It means the crew has told you
the drop zone is not fully contained, and the comment says what to consider. Read both before you
decide, then approve with a note or reject with a reason.

## What approving does

An approved activity becomes blocking for its exclusion zone, if it has one. That means no other
activity can be approved over the same zone and window.

Before that point, an activity is only a request, and requests do not block each other. Several crews
may ask for the same crane slot. Nothing is wrong until somebody approves one of them.

If the window overlaps a booking that already holds the zone, the approval cannot go through. The card
says **Clashes with an approved lockout** and names the blocking booking, and **Approve Activity**
becomes **Reschedule & approve**.

## Check the day board first

Because requests do not block, a zone can have more pending requests than it can satisfy. Approving one
of them may leave others stranded — those activities become **bumped**, and their crews need telling
before they travel to the project.

:::caution
Bumped is worked out when a page is read, not stored on the activity. You will not find a "bumped"
filter in a list of work activities. Check the [day board](/run-a-project/day-board/) before you approve a
booking on a zone you know is contested.
:::

When an activity does become bumped, the person who created it and the supervisors of the
subcontractor it belongs to are notified automatically.

## If you approve the wrong one

Cancel or change the winning booking and the other activity stops being bumped — again, because bumped
is computed from the bookings that exist rather than recorded once.

## Related

- [Exclusion zones](/tenant-setup/exclusion-zones/)
- [Day board](/run-a-project/day-board/)