What Does
Contractor Management Services Mean?
Contractor management services are third-party services offered to the individual or company that hold legal responsibility for the management of contractors on a given worksite, such as a construction site. Firms that provide contractor management services are hired to ensure that all contractors are dealt with in a way that meets the legal obligations of the person responsible for the worksite, including safety obligations such as worksite induction.
Contractor management services can include a diverse array of offerings, including both human-mediated contractor management and fully automated software solutions.
Safeopedia Explains Contractor Management Services
The use of a contractor management solution is a risk-control strategy used to help the person responsible for a worksite (usually the employer or the prime contractor) to meet safety obligations as well as other duties. It does not, however, transfer legal responsibility or otherwise remove any liability that the responsible person has for workplace safety.
Because the compliance and safety requirements associated with a given construction project will vary depending on the jurisdiction and type of work being undertaken, a third-party contract management service with expertise related to the specific project area is often used both for efficiency reasons and to ensure compliance with a set of obligations that the employer or primary contractor may not have the ability to manage alone.
Contractor management as a full project lifecycle process refers to the qualification, selection, management, and analysis of the contracted workforce. The qualification stage involves ensuring that a given contractor has the necessary safety requirements for his or her role. Management involves providing initial safety training and site-induction activities, as well as subsequent safety-compliance-assurance measures. Analysis involves the proper handling of safety-relevant data such as the recording of all safety incidents and near-misses within a central database. Contractor management services may provide some or all of these services, with software-based solutions often specializing mainly in areas such as automated induction training and qualifications tracking.
From an occupational health perspective, contractor safety management should be considered a form of risk control. The addition of outsourced labor, especially if that labor comes from multiple disparate groups, introduces safety risks into the system due to reduced transparency into contractor qualifications and challenges related to ensuring safety compliance from individuals who are not a part of the employer’s safety culture. The use of contractor management services allows the various aspects of compliance to be centralized and provides full visibility of all contracted personnel.
Contractor management should not be confused with construction management, which involves the employer transferring responsibility for the execution of the project rather than procuring services to manage contractors as a human resource.