8 Health & Safety Tips for choosing a contractor

Managing health and safety on projects can be a real challenge. However, it’s something that cannot be overlooked because all parties, directly and indirectly involved have a legal obligation to provide a safe and healthy workplace at all times.

Here’s a few key things to know about safety.

1.The importance of Wellness

First of all, wellness of the team involved is the most important factor in health and safety, because if you have fatigued or sick contractors, it doesn’t matter how much planning, safety measures and training they have, they will make mistakes and incidents will occur.

Here are some ways to improve wellness:

Not engaging subcontractors wherever possible because they may not have the same values
Limiting weekly hours worked so staff aren’t fatigued
encouraging recovery programs if staff are sick

So an important question to your contractor would be, “how do you manage the wellness of the people coming on my site?”

2.what is a SSSP and why is it so important?

This is the site specific safety plan (sometimes called a SWMS or Safe Work Method Statement). Prior to starting work, your contractor will provide you with a SSSP which covers a range of safety functions including task analysis, emergency plan, hazard register to name a few. In short, this document is the plan to safely complete your project. You should review and agree to it prior to work commencing.

One key factor here is the title – site specific. These plans can easily be a generic copy and paste from a previous job with very little thought gone into making them specific to your site. In the unlikely case of an H&S incident on site, this documentation would be disregarded but WorkSafe inspectors will be looking at all details to ensure all practicable steps were maintained, so it pays to check them out carefully and not brush over it thinking it’s all ok. Remember that you could be held accountable if you have employed a contractor to work on your site that is not up to standard.

3.Daily 5x5 Meetings

Each day your contractors need to have a 5x5 meeting where they quickly review the work for the day and ensure there are no new hazards. This should be recorded formally, and your organisation should have a record of these. Most contractors now have an online system which sends these through to you in real time.

4.Reputation of Long Term Companies

There’s never any guarantee how long a contractor will be in business for but to some degree the past is an indicator of the future. Selecting a contractor who has been in business for a long time is a good idea because they will be careful about protecting their reputation. Always beware of working with a company who has nothing to lose!

5.why Pre-start Meetings matter

A smart idea is to have a pre-start meeting onsite. This where you get all the stakeholders together and ensure everyone is on the same page about the many factors including safety, quality, communication and presentation. If the contractor doesn’t instigate this, you should arrange it regardless as the value will be well worth the time spent.

6.what communication should i expect?

Communication is one of the central pillars to making a successful project. Often when customers refer to a good or bad painting contractor, they are more concerned about their communication than the actual quality of their workmanship. Ensure you are very clear about the following areas prior to starting work;

Who’s responsible onsite?
How often will they have informal check-ins?
How often will there be formal communication?
If there are issues/queries, who will address these?

7.Independent Auditing should be happening

A great idea to maintain quality and safety standards is to audit the teams. Employing either external or internal auditors who spot check on a regular basis will ensure teams continue to perform at high standards. Its standard good practice in the industry to audit their teams every 400 to 600 hours onsite - check that this will be happening with your contractor, and that you can see the results if you want to.

8.Other Things to look out for

Safely managing a project can be a challenge when you aren’t always onsite. A good contactor will always use good clear signage and barriers, and often use temporary fencing. There are other factors to keep in mind around banned equipment like ladders and step ladders, many of which have been banned in the last 5-10 years and yet are still being used by contractors out there. If an incident occurs, all parties can and will be investigated, and if found to be guilty, not knowing the rules is no excuse in the New Zealand Judicial system!

Contractor checklist covering above points

The above list of things to think about when choosing a contractor is daunting, and there’s no way you can fully understand the implications or effects of them all. We suggest you use the this Contractor Checklist that we use, which helps takes the guesswork out of it. Check out how we got taught some Lessons from Mobil for more information on this.

Want to discuss this further?

Featured