How to Be Confident in Choosing a Safe Contractor and Eliminate Subjective Assessment

One of the key stages of interaction between a client and a contractor is the selection of the contractor.

In most companies, this stage of interaction does not address production safety issues or only touches upon them formally. In such companies – "whoever costs less, builds".

At our company, JSC OTEKO, we establish an equal assessment across all areas: production safety, experience, quality, economics and finance, technical equipment, etc.

The assessment in the area of production safety takes place in several stages:

1. Questioning. Receiving a completed questionnaire and supporting documents from potential contractors.

The questionnaire takes into account the main elements of production safety management:

• Presence of accidents (minor, severe, group, fatal);
• Presence of emergencies and fires;
• Availability of management system compliance certification;
• Availability of documentation on compliance with workers' rights (policies, codes, regulations, collective agreements, etc.);
• Availability of documents on the development of the HSE Management System

2. Conducting a desk audit of documents:

• Organization of the HSE Management System
• Conducting Special Assessment of Working Conditions (SAWC)
• HSE Instructions
• Work Execution Plans / Process Charts, etc.
• Qualification certificates
• Organization of medical examinations
• Organization of incident registration and investigation procedures
• PPE (standards, procurement, issuance)
• Special machinery, lifting structures, vehicles (responsible persons, dispatching, medical exams, partial/full technical inspections, etc.);

3. Conducting an interview with the head of the organization. The interview covers the following areas of production safety:

• General questions
• Goal-setting questions
• Direct involvement of the manager in safety matters
• Provision and use of PPE
• Incident registration and investigation
• Organization and implementation of work control
• Application of a risk-based approach
• Training and development

4. Conducting an on-site audit of the contractor:

• Technical base inspection
• Living conditions
• Work organization
• Safe execution of work by types
• Equipment and tools, etc.
  

All stages carried out during procurement procedures are documented and recorded in checklists. The checklists developed by our team provide an assessment result in digital format, which eliminates subjectivity in the contractor's evaluation.

Conducting an on-site audit makes sense if a long-term contract is planned with a potential contractor and/or if a contractor is being selected for high-risk work.