Electricians, plumbers, air conditioning service engineers, fire contractors, roofers, IT installers, cleaners, engineers…the list of contractors businesses rely on can be long.
And usually, we bring them in for a very good reason: they know their trade.
But there is another side to contractor safety that can easily be missed.
They know their job. They do not know your business.
A contractor can be highly experienced in what they do and still know very little about how your workplace operates.
They may not know which areas suddenly become busy, where visitors or members of the public may be, what equipment is still live or in use, what other work is happening nearby or which access routes absolutely need to stay clear.
Their competence matters, but so does your knowledge of your own site.
Good contractor management brings the two together.
Before work begins
Contractor management is more than agreeing a date and letting somebody through the door, but it does not need to become an enormous paperwork exercise either.
The arrangements should be proportionate to the work and the risk involved.
Straightforward, lower-risk work may only need simple arrangements.
Higher-risk or more specialist work may need more thought — risk assessments, method statements, permits, isolations, evidence of competence or closer coordination.
Before work starts, useful questions include:
- What exactly are they coming in to do?
- Why are they suitable for this particular work?
- What significant risks does their activity introduce?
- What risks from your workplace do they need to know about?
- Who else could be affected?
- Will equipment or services need isolating?
- Could fire precautions, access routes or other safety arrangements be affected?
- What happens if the job changes once they start?
The purpose is not to collect paperwork for the sake of having it.
It is to make sure the right people understand the job, the risks and who is responsible for what before work begins.
They cannot know what you have not told them
Think about all the little things your own team knows simply because they work there every day.
They know when deliveries arrive.
They know which routes people use.
They know where visitors tend to wander.
They know which equipment is running, which doors need to stay clear and what happens when the fire alarm sounds.
A contractor coming onto site for the first time does not have that knowledge.
Depending on the work, they may need information about:
- site access and restricted areas
- emergency arrangements
- fire precautions and escape routes
- vehicle movements
- other activities taking place nearby
- vulnerable people, visitors or members of the public
- site-specific hazards
- live equipment and services
- permits or isolation arrangements
The contractor brings knowledge of their specialist activity.
You bring knowledge of the environment they are going to be working in.
Both matter.
Make the communication work
It is also worth thinking beyond simply sending information.
Has it been understood?
A written induction or contractor briefing may be perfectly suitable. In another workplace, a site map, photograph, quick face-to-face briefing, visual instruction or short video might get an important message across far more effectively.
The question is not:
“Have we sent them the information?”
It is:
“Do they understand what they need to know before they start?”
That small shift can make a big difference.
Stay involved while the work is happening
Once a competent contractor starts work, they should not need somebody standing over them all day.
But contractor management should not end at sign-in either.
Depending on the job, it may be sensible to check that:
- the work is still within the agreed scope
- the agreed controls remain in place
- barriers, isolations or permits are still effective
- something unexpected has not changed the risk
- your own employees are not entering the work area
- no new hazards have been introduced
It is simply about staying appropriately involved.
And don’t forget the handover
The end of the job is another point that can easily get missed.
Before the contractor leaves, consider:
- Has the area been left safe?
- Have guards, covers or safety devices been put back?
- Have isolations been removed correctly?
- Has any fire-stopping or compartmentation been affected?
- Has waste or redundant equipment been removed?
- Are you expecting certificates, test results or commissioning information?
- Has the work changed anything that now needs reflecting in your own risk assessments, maintenance or inspection arrangements?
Someone packing up their tools does not necessarily mean the job is completely closed out.
A quick sense-check
Pick one contractor activity your business uses regularly and imagine they were arriving tomorrow.
Would you know:
What you need from them?
What they need from you?
Who is coordinating the work?
What controls need to be in place?
And what needs checking before the job is handed back?
If the answer is “sort of”, that is probably a useful place to start.
Contractor management does not need to be complicated.
It just needs to be proportionate to the risk, clear to everyone involved and workable in practice.
And who do you turn to when you’re not sure?
Contractor management is only one of the health and safety questions that crop up when you are running a business.
Sometimes you know exactly what needs doing.
Other times it is more:
“Does this apply to us?”
“Is this enough?”
“Do we need something more formal here?”
“Can someone just sense-check this before we crack on?”
UK employers need access to competent health and safety assistance. For some businesses, that competence sits comfortably within their own team.
For others, particularly businesses without an internal health and safety role, having someone external to call can be a much more practical option.
That is where SHE Does Safety’s External Competent Person support comes in.
We work alongside the businesses we support rather than simply appearing once a year to produce a document and disappear again.
We get to know the business, how it works and where support is genuinely needed.
That might mean:
- talking through contractor arrangements before higher-risk work starts
- sense-checking a risk assessment or method statement
- helping work through a change to equipment or a process
- reviewing policies and arrangements
- helping decide what needs action now and what can reasonably wait
- providing relevant health, safety and fire updates
- identifying when more specialist support is needed
The business still owns and manages its health and safety responsibilities.
Our role is to give you competent support, another pair of eyes and someone to call when you are not quite sure what the sensible next step is.
And importantly, we are not there to make health and safety bigger than it needs to be.
If a simple arrangement is suitable, we will say so.
If something needs more attention, we will explain why and help you work through it.
For many of our clients, it works much like having external HR or accountancy support — you do not necessarily need that expertise sitting in-house every day, but it is incredibly useful to know who to call when you need it.
Could External Competent Person support work for your business?
You may already have all the competence you need internally — including a team who can independently verify your arrangements, then brilliant.
But if health and safety tends to land with someone, who already has another job to do, or you regularly find yourself wondering whether you have missed something, external support can give you a bit more confidence that the right things are being picked up.
SHE Does Safety provides practical, proportionate External Competent Person support for businesses that want ongoing access to someone who gets to know their organisation rather than starting from scratch every time they call.
No enormous management system.
No paperwork for paperwork’s sake.
Just practical support that fits the business you are running.
If you’d like to know what appointing SHE as your External Competent Person support looks like, get in touch and we can have an informal chat about whether it would be useful for your business.
About the author
Laura Tull CertIOSH, MIFSM is Director of SHE Does Safety Ltd, supporting businesses across East Anglia with practical health, safety and fire consultancy and External Competent Person support.