By Joy Inouye

Creating a culture of safety isn’t just meant for full-time employees of an organization. It requires the involvement all workers whether full-time, temporary or contract and the diligence of the companies or organizations where their work occurs. Contractor safety management is extremely relevant in our increasingly global and complex world that involves work in multiple countries, non-routine work and the use of international and temporary workforces.

The Campbell Institute, the center of excellence for environmental health and safety at the National Safety Council, has released a new research report collecting the best practices of world-class EHS organizations around the management of contractor and supplier safety. Through analysis and interviews with 14 Campbell Institute members and partners, the Institute collected recommended practices for contractor management along five crucial steps of the contractor lifecycle:

• Prequalification
• Pre-job task and risk assessment
• Training and orientation
• Job monitoring
• Post-job evaluation

Prequalification: In this phase, all research participants assess contractors on their safety statistics, such as Experience Modification Rate (EMR), Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), fatality rate, DART and other OSHA recordables. These rates and numbers are well understood across organizations of all sizes and industries, which make them standard for data collection and evaluation. All participants also require contractors to submit these statistics for a given time period, typically the last three years. The above safety statistics are just a baseline, however, for the wealth of rates and numbers collected and calculated by Campbell Institute participants during the vetting process. Some members also look at injury logs, environmental reports and presence of continuous improvement programs.

Pre-job task and risk assessment: Before a contractor begins work, Campbell members recommend that an organization have a method to evaluate the risk of the work to be performed (typically per a risk matrix) to place contractors in a predetermined risk category. This process helps owners and contractors understand the...Click here to read the rest of the blog post.