Contractor-Client: Interaction in Safety Matters

From Formal Control to Partnership: How to Build Work with Contractors

Interaction with contracting organizations is one of the most acute problems in the field of occupational safety. Often, it is contractors who are assigned the most complex and dangerous types of work, while their level of training and provision with PPE leaves much to be desired. During the session "Safe Contractor: Partnership at All Stages of Interaction," experts discussed how to transition from a system of punishments to real assistance and partnership. Mikhail Ryazanov, drawing on his 20 years of experience managing large industrial enterprises, analyzes key problems and proposes a systematic approach to managing contractor safety.

Differentiated Approach: Why Uniform Requirements Do Not Work

The speaker notes that applying the same requirements to all contractors — from large long-term partners to small companies hired for urgent emergency work — leads to double standards and formalism. If a contractor has to complete the work "yesterday," they physically will not have time to fill out multi-page HSE questionnaires. Therefore, the best practice is to separate contracting organizations by risk level (for example, into "red," "yellow," and "green" zones) and build work with them in a differentiated manner.

Five Stages of Contractor Management

The presentation details the life cycle of interaction with contractors, which is advisable to divide into five stages:

• Pre-tender: Forming minimum safety requirements that serve as a cut-off criterion for admission to bidding.
• During the tender: Assessing the real capabilities of applicants. The speaker shows, using a practical example, how visiting a potential contractor's sites helped identify simulated activities and avoid signing a problematic contract.
• After selecting a contractor: Clear distribution of responsibility. It is unacceptable to leave the contractor to fend for themselves. Joint work on training, control, and site admission is necessary.
• During work execution: Appointing specific responsible persons to monitor compliance with safety requirements, taking into account the assigned risk zone.
• Upon completion of work: Analyzing results and forming ratings (including "blacklists"), but with an understanding of regional specifics and potential consequences for the production process.

Management Tools: Training, Control, and Motivation

Mikhail Ryazanov emphasizes that penalties often prove ineffective. Positive motivation tools work much better: benefits, simplified admission, and support in future tenders. It is also important to provide high-quality training and independent control of real knowledge, rather than just the presence of formal certificates.

What you will learn from this webinar:

• How to classify contractors and adapt safety requirements for different types of work?
• Why the minimum price criterion when selecting a contractor inevitably leads to a decrease in safety levels?
• How to properly distribute safety responsibility between the client and the contractor at all stages of interaction?
• What questions you need to ask yourself before starting work to minimize risks and avoid looking for a "scapegoat" in case of an incident?