22 Canadian Occupational Safety | www.cos-mag.com
Strong contract management
program ensures all workers on a
project adhere to your safety policies
By Linda Johnson
Contractor
challenge
independent contractor's workers are on the job, work site
owners cannot assume those workers will comply with their
rules. Employers — who are often deemed legally respon-
sible for everyone on their site — need to have an effective
contract management program to help ensure contractors
work to the safety standards they have set and no worker is
injured on their work site.
Before work starts, managers should have a clear picture
of the specific job to be done and its risks, says Anne-Sophie
Tétreault, senior expert, HSSEQ compliance and risk man-
agement processes at Cognibox in Shawinigan, Que. During
this planning stage, managers need to determine what mate-
rials and safe work methods are to be used, what appropriate
personal protective equipment (PPE) is required and how to
create a safe work environment based on the specific condi-
tions of the work and area.
"You do this in advance, before people are working under
time pressures. You can say, 'This is the lock-out/tag-out I
want you to follow when you are working at my site. This
is the protective equipment I want you to wear. This is the
permit that has to be signed and reviewed by my supervisor
before your workers start work. Finally, this is the training
and competence I want all your workers to have before they
enter my premises,'"
Tétreault says.
The risk assessment will help identify the qualifications
the contractor is required to have to do the job safely and
the company polices it needs to follow.
PRE-QUALIFICATION AND SELECTION
Make sure the potential contractor has a formal health and
safety program. Does it have a way of identifying and con-
trolling risks and making sure workers are properly trained
and equipped for the workplace? How many incidents did
the contractor have over the last three or four years?
Patrick Robinson, president of Sherwood Park, Alta.-based
CQ Network, says some companies have adopted a policy
of requiring prospective contractors to have, or commit to
getting, a Certificate of Recognition (COR).
"This is a level of approval that many purchasing organi-
zations approach fairly pragmatically," he says. "All things
being equal — the candidates for a project are relatively
equal in technical capacity; their price is roughly the same;
their execution, their team and plan — presuming all those
things are relatively equal, many companies will say, 'We
want to go with the one that has a COR.' This gives us a
I
n October, contract workers at a Shell Canada oil drill-
ing site near Fox Creek, Alta., were pumping water to
another site. A pump started revving, so the workers
went to investigate. Suddenly, a hose on the pump broke
free and hit a contractor, Abdelghani Hemad, 47. He was
treated by paramedics at the site and taken to hospital
but died later that day.
Safety managers devote a great deal of time to developing
and implementing a successful safety program to prevent
their workers from being injured or killed. But when an
