Jared Smith of Avetta has been involved in the vetting and hiring of contractors for his company, and has provided advice for others when they are in the market for outsourcing some work to another firm.

Contractors become part of the worksite as much as employees, even though they may be under different rules via different leadership. But as Smith noted in a recent question-and-answer piece in Professional Safety magazine, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico brought to the fore the importance of contractors and the urgency that the contractors know what they are doing while on the worksite.

In other words, the contracting firm may sign the checks for these workers, but these workers need to follow the worksite rules of the employer. To not take that seriously puts not only the contract worker at risk, but also means your own employees could be placed in jeopardy. Because of thixs, Smith answered some questions about vetting and hiring a contracting firm, and we covered the first couple of questions in the last post. This time, we’ll take a look at Smith’s comments regarding hiring a safe contractor and the role of technology in a good vetting process.

When asked about steps that companies can take to ensure annd verify a contractor can, and will, be safe, he suggested a nine-step process that can cover the bases:

  1. Stats don’t lie. Be ojective in the criteria you use; look at the contractor’s recent safety record (at least three years), check on the firm’s insurance claim history and find out the firm’s management practices overall. Seeing a measure of improvement and a continued move to improve will help, as there should be no expectation of perfection. If there is no improvement and no steps taken to improve, that can be a warning flag.
  2. Go beyond the numbers. Once you have data, you can dig deeper into some subjective information, like work history, past performance and look at the company’s own written policies.
  3. Create pre-q standards.  This will create an apples-to-apples comparison among contractors and help your company whittle down the candidates. Create a form and have it cover questions regarding safety, such as company culture, safety history, financial stability and insurance/licensing requirements.
  4. Do an audit. This is a safety audit, making sure that the written safety performance matches reality, and compare the firm’s safety protocols with the results. Transparency here can be vital.
  5. Inspect the inspections. Make sure to know the methods by which the contractor inspects its equipment and know that the best inspection techniques are used for on-site inspections of workers and equipment, including hazard identification and mitigation.
  6. Consider carefully. Make sure that all the bidders know that you are considering safety as just as much a factor as other variables – including price.
  7. Look at every angle. Go beyond the cheapest company and look at the whole picture – customer service, safety record, company philosophy, work history.experience and the efficacy of the skills in order to do the job you request.
  8. Eagle eye. Always monitor the contractor on your worksite, conducting consistent evaluations fo the work that is performed and compare it with the contract to make sure it is compliant with expectations. Measure its performance against the contract as well, as well as by itss contributions to your worksite safety record.
  9. Consort? There is a model to consider for managing multiple vendors and contractors called a consortium, which would help with sharing information about each vendor and contractors.

Regarding a question of the role of technology in the process of vetting and selecting a contracting firm, Smith said that there is no technology that replaces manual vetting, but technology can enhance the process with organizing information, creating a system of vetting and establishing automation with real-time updates and information of each contractor in the vetting process and once the contractor is on-board.  He said that tech can also help manage risk across every part of the supply chain, no matter where it’s located.