SUBCONTRACTOR SAFETY
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Clive Roberts
MANAGING THE SAFETY OF YOUR STAFF AND SUBCONTRACTORS How do you ensure the safety of your s u b co n t ra c t o rs a n d integrate them into the rest of your service organisation when many firms employ hundreds of ‘subbies’ each year, with many working from remote locations far away from head office?
I
f your business is to provide subcon-
on-site, so that you are not exposed to the
tractors to support mining production
risk of accidents or injuries resulting from
or telecommunication network updates
subcontractors not complying with your
(think NBN), or to manage the main-
HSE procedures.
tenance of Australian firms’ fire and safety equipment, you’ll want to ensure
Consider the challenges of ensuring each of
you are delivering a competitive and quality
your subbies has completed and complies
service, while complying with industry health,
with site and customer-specific safety brief-
safety and environment (HSE) requirements.
ings before going on-site. It is not possible to create a HSE management plan that fits
While this sounds pretty straightforward, it
all situations for your staff. Many of your
is actually very complex, particularly when
customers will have already created their own
you consider the challenges of identifying and
HSE manuals and policies, which everyone
briefing specialist maintenance contractors
on-site is expected to follow.
for jobs as far afield as Cobar in western New South Wales and the Pilbara in the north of
One way of addressing this challenge is to
Western Australia, and for network repairs
find a system where you can capture a skills
in metropolitan cities. Not only do you have
matrix of your engineering staff, record who
different legislative requirements for each of
has been inducted for each location (where
these jobs, every site and industry sector has
you may perform services) and even digitise
different safety and compliance requirements.
any documents that you know are required by the customer in question.
If you are a user of contracted engineering services, you’ll want to know that the staff
This is information that makes you money,
you use have been properly briefed and
because before your team schedules en-
operate at the highest safety levels while
gineers to go on-site and fix things, your
This issue sponsored by UDC Systems • www.udcsystems.com.au
FSB NOVEMBER 2014
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