Contractor Management - The Macro View

A ten-minute walkthrough of four foundational contractor management elements.

Contractor Management: The Macro View

As a global trend, more organizations in nearly all sectors of the economy are outsourcing more work. Currently, contractors fill one in every five jobs in the United States. Contractors are projected to make up half the workforce within the next decade. This trend is common across industrialized and emerging countries around the world.

No matter the industry, a key factor is workplace health and safety. The following is an introduction to the main elements of contractor management with an occupational health and safety focus.

Contractor management is a business process applied by purchasers of contracted services to maximize efficiency and reduce sources of loss, among other business objectives.

High-risk workplaces are physical locations and work activities that expose workers to significant or unusual hazards.

Contractor Management Core Elements

Broadly, there are four major elements of a contractor management system: Assessment, Mobilization, Monitoring, and Review.

Contractor Assessment: Know What You're Buying

Keep contractor safety in mind when you take measures to ensure your worksites' safety. Although contractors are externally hired professionals, your company's health and safety policies apply to them when they are on your worksites.
Therefore, assessing your contractors is an important task and one of the crucial aspects of proactive health and safety management. By doing your due diligence, you can ensure the safety of your employees, contractors, and the public.
Health and safety assessment examines contractor capability, management systems, and previous performance against a purchaser's internal criteria. A well-rounded approach to contractor assessment includes both leading and lagging indicators.

Why Contractor Assessment is Important

One of the critical reasons for conducting a safety assessment for contractors is that they aren't on your payroll. Still, they manage exposed workers on your worksites.
When contractors are active on your sites, they are responsible for implementing the health and safety standards for all their workers and any subcontractors under their direction.

Best Practices for Contractor Safety Assessment

A contractor safety assessment is based on the idea that all workers are as valuable as your employees. This philosophy is embedded in the legal framework governing workplace safety. Here are steps you can take to ensure contractor safety.
Before hiring a contractor, your primary focus will be performing essential due diligence. This starts with checking the contractor's performance on previous projects. Ask for safety data like workers' compensation claims experience and any actions taken by safety regulators.

Managed Mobilization: Leverage Your Pre-Award Efforts

Mobilization is the series of actions taken to bring a contractor's people, equipment, and materials to the worksite and prepare them for project execution. Many activities add value to this critical piece of the contractor management process. Here are three of the most vital:

Document Verification

Relevant licenses, permits, or any accreditation required for the work are obtained at or before contractor mobilization. The purpose of obtaining these documents is to determine competency and verify compliance with the regulatory requirements.

Task and Risk Assessment

Once hired, the contractor assesses the known risks and those likely to be created by their work. The assessment is typically documented. Health and safety legislation describes risk assessment requirements in many jurisdictions.
The benefit of a project-specific risk assessment is a knowledgeable contractor who understands the hazards and is well-equipped to manage them.

Training and Orientation

No matter the contractor's assessed capability and previous performance, it is critical to brief onsite management and workers about the health and safety systems implemented on your worksites.

Contractor Monitoring: Maintaining Safe Worksites

Active monitoring controls the worksite and demonstrates ongoing due diligence. Frequent checks help ensure that the contractor complies with purchaser standards and that hazards are identified and managed.

Post-project reviews are an excellent opportunity to assess contractor performance and record lessons learned.
One of the best ways to conduct a post-job assessment is to study the documentation created in the active phase of the contract. These records include incident investigations, inspections, and summaries of focused observations.

Conclusion

Effective contractor management requires known standards that apply on the worksite and management leadership in four macro areas.

With management focus and measurable goals, each activity can vastly improve contractor management systems and performance.