Contractor Safety

The importance of the Quality of Interactions between Company Representatives and their Contractors

Contractor safety has been a hot topic for many years. This increased focus has resulted in legislation around the world clarifying safety obligations of companies and contractors and an increase in the number of companies offering contractor safety management support. Despite this, many companies are still struggling with the challenge of contractor safety performance plateauing, which invites exploration of the underlying issues.

While working with many companies in heavy industry, including the energy, utility, and mining sectors, we have observed that many of the traditional approaches to contractor safety management have real value. However, what separates exceptional contractor safety programs from those that are less successful is usually the quality of executing key elements, such as the efforts taken to qualify contractors and the safety management activities in the workplace where the work is being executed.

Qualifying Contractors

Qualifying contractors makes intuitive sense. After all, it would be irresponsible to hire a contractor who has demonstrated they are incapable of working safely. Before hiring a contractor, it seems perfectly reasonable to ask:

• Do the contractor’s employees have the appropriate training certifications?
• Does the contractor have safety policies and a safety management plan?
• Does the contractor have a safety record which is good enough?

While this high-level goal of qualifying contractors makes sense, the devil is typically in the details. For instance, if we consider the common expectation that a contracting company ought to have their own safety policies and safety manuals guiding operations, it’s hard to dispute the logic. However, a quick internet search will find companies that offer services to create safety manuals and programs within days for contractors who need to become ‘certified’ with potential employers or contractor safety data base registries.

On one hand, it seems perfectly reasonable that experts would be prepared to offer advice to contractors about what to put in their safety management programs. It also makes sense to maintain the data in a registry. On the other hand, we think it’s worth asking how much value there is in a cut and paste document. Much like the prospect of a college student buying an essay online, it’s possible that contractors can make themselves look better than they really are by buying something they don’t live by. It’s also possible that there are still some companies where that’s ok, they think they can claim to have done their due diligence and that any fault in an incident will fall on the contractor.

At the end of the day, we all know that safety performance in any company, whether it be a large multi-national or a local contractor, is dependent on:

Having the appropriate safety systems and processes in place.

Leadership setting the right safety tone at the top.

Managers and supervisors setting appropriate expectations and following up with employees.

Having employees who are trained properly and able to safely complete the work.

If leadership within the contracting company push their people to take shortcuts or turn a blind eye to their own safety manual, problems will develop.

We believe that having a good qualifying process is important. We also believe that qualifying a contractor should be more than a procurement specialist asking for a copy of the contractor’s safety management plans.

Qualifying contractors is best viewed as a nuanced process that does involve some review of documentation, such as safety manuals and safety records. Nevertheless, a degree of skepticism around documents is appropriate. Slick-looking documents don’t ‘prove’ anything. Enron’s Vision and Values Statement did not prevent the collapse of the company. Similarly, some contractors, particularly smaller ones, may be very safe operators who lack extravagant documentation.

Therefore, we suggest that document review should be backed up by meeting with principles in the contracting company to gauge leadership’s safety philosophy and practices. When structured appropriately, with well-crafted probing questions, this type of meeting can be illuminating. In every case, the findings during the qualifying process must be correlated with observations made during the time the contractor is working on the property.

At the Job Site

A crucial element of any contractor safety program involves the interactions between key safety and operational representatives from the hiring company with the contractor’s personnel at the job site, before, during and after the work is completed.

There are critical aspects to observe during these front-line interactions, including how the owner’s representatives set expectations before work is started, how they approach workplace visits, and how they hold the contra