Contractor Management

Contractor Management is concerned with ensuring that when you hire a contractor to undertake work on your behalf, health and safety issues are properly managed in terms of how they affect the contractor’s employees as well as your own. This month, we’re examining an aspect of health and safety that illustrates how extensively the legislation applies. I am thinking about Contractor Management – our responsibility for the welfare of all those people who do work for us but who are not on our payroll.

There is a little Dutch proverb that goes along the lines of “Big fleas have little fleas, upon their backs to bite 'em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum”. To some extent, this describes the business situation where one organisation hires a second organisation to do work for them. If it is a major piece of work, the second organisation may hire a third or fourth organisation to help them, and so on.

Although fleas may not be responsible for one another, in health and safety terms, businesses certainly are and therefore need to operate according to clear procedures when hiring contractors.

Misconceptions

It is easy to fall into the attitude that what contractors do and don’t do and how that affects the health and safety of their own employees is entirely their own responsibility. It is true that contractors are responsible for their own employees but it is not true to say that the ‘entire’ responsibility rests with them. If you hire a contractor to work on your behalf then you also have a responsibility for the safety of everyone affected, including the employees of the contractor.

Smaller organisations might mistakenly believe that this responsibility only applies to large corporations who frequently have contractors on site, but it is surprising how often small companies hire contractors, even for such mundane tasks as cleaning offices, decorating, maintenance tasks, cleaning windows and the like. The same laws in regard to contractor safety apply in all instances.

Case in Point

The consequences of this legal liability were highlighted recently in a reported case involving an electrician who was working on a client’s site. Case details are available on the Health and Safety Executive’s website. The person, who was employed by a contractor, was electrocuted whilst pulling redundant cables from trunking.

Although the client company had safe systems of work in place for its own employees, it failed to ensure its contractors either followed the same safe systems of work or had in place similar arrangements of their own. The significant point in regard to Contractor Safety is that whilst the contracted firm was charged for failings in regard to the health and safety of their own employees, the client was also charged and fined for failing to ensure the contractor actually had appropriate systems in place.

Client Responsibilities

So what is your (and our) responsibility in regard to contractors?

First of all, responsibilities for health and safety are clearly defined in criminal law. When a client hires a contractor, there may be a written contract in place to define who is responsible for each aspect of the work. However, what such a contract cannot do is to pass the legal responsibilities for health and safety between the client and the contractor. They must both execute their own responsibilities under the law, including where they overlap.

This overlap of responsibility also applies between the contractor and any sub-contractors that are employed. Exactly how far responsibility extends along this chain depends upon the circumstances and therefore the prudent course of action is to always operate rigorous checking and monitoring procedures.

In broad outline, when bringing in a contractor, the client organisation needs to:

Fully define the work to be done
Consider the nature and degree of risks associated with the work – this is a typical risk assessment
Select a contractor who can demonstrate the necessary competencies for the work and who is also operating in accordance with appropriate health and safety systems.
Decide what training and information needs to be exchanged between all parties involved and who needs to receive it
Establish appropriate methods to ensure cooperation and coordination between all parties
Put in place appropriate management supervision, including employee consultation when this might be required

Contractor Responsibilities

Looking at the situation from the other side (i.e. contractors), they obviously have a legal responsibility to care for the health and safety of their own employees as well as others who are affected by their activities, which includes employees of the client who has hired them.

Bearing in mind that the hiring company is responsible for checking on the health and safety arrangements of all contractors, it follows that contractors who cannot demonstrate adequate health and safety provision are, in effect, disqualifying themselves from working for the most responsible and reputable clients, which usually means the most desirable contracts. In other words, having good health and safety in place is one of the best business investments you can make, quite apart from its primary benefits of reducing injuries, sickness, lost time, sick leave and the like.

However you go about discharging your responsibilities, it is important that your procedures are rigorous and systematic. A good starting point is to establish a checklist of items that you need to address, which is tailored to your local circumstances. IOSH has published an excellent leaflet on Contractor Safety that contains a checklist, along with comprehensive guidance on how to use it. Whilst the coverage is probably more extensive than most organisations need, it offers an excellent starting point.

This article is not intended to be an exhaustive treatment of Contractor Management. For that, you really need to discuss your specific circumstances with one of our consultants. However, what I have been at pains to do is to highlight that our legal responsibility for health and safety extends far beyond our own employees and any organisation that fails to recognise the extent of their responsibility could be facing significant penalties.

Contact EDP HS&E Consultants for all your health, safety and environment needs. We can check your current arrangements for managing contractors and advise you about any changes or improvements you need to make.

To discuss your requirements, without any obligation on your part, please gives us a call on 01744 766000 or complete the Enquiry Form on our website.

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