WRITTEN FOR ALLEN & YORK
BY - ROD TRIPPIER (FREELANCE - HEALTH & SAFETY ADVISER) - Thank you to Rod for his insight and experience into the world of Health & Safety.
Recently we’ve been discussing the management of risk. So it’s disappointing when the senior executive of a company appears to publicly demonstrate a lack of understanding regarding the safeguards required to manage sub-contracted works.
Especially when the employing company is a global player in a high risk business, where one slip can create major consequences involving personal injury, death, negative commercial outcomes and ecological disaster.
When considering the employment of sub-contract companies, it is incumbent upon the employer, whether client or contractor, to carry out a thorough appraisal of the competence relating to any enterprise sub-contracted to carry out work.
It is essential to ensure that they have the necessary skills, ability and processes to manage work safely. This involves an investigative process to examine internal processes, technologies, competences of managerial and operational personnel, and the finances to deliver.
Following a fire and the death of eleven people, one senior executive was quoted in the press recently as saying, “This was not our accident. This was not our equipment. It was not our people, our systems or our processes this was “X” company’s; their systems, their people and their equipment”.
Maybe, but it is not sufficient for the employer to abdicate responsibility by blaming the sub-contractor when something subsequently goes wrong. Regardless of the contract, the management of health and safety is a joint responsibility led by the employing company.
The question is, would you allow a sub-contract enterprise to dictate the safety standards on your premises, or on one of your projects that if it went wrong, it had the potential to kill some body, potentially putting the CEO and possibly the Board in jail on a corporate manslaughter charge, jeopardising the company’s future and financial standing, and creating an ecological disaster, leaving your company to pick up the pieces?
In Summary..............
Even though a sub-contract enterprise has a duty of care, the appointment of that enterprise does not absolve the employing company of its duty under health and safety law. The employer still has considerable control over any contract, and must ensure that health and safety matters are adequately managed so as to prevent danger.
The employer and the sub-contractor must take joint responsibility for the management of health and safety prior to and during the work, agreeing suitable and sufficient control measures.
These may include, but will not be limited to;
- Scope of Works
- Risk Assessment
- Te use of Method Statements
- Standard Operating Procedures
- Safe systems of Work
- Isolation and Locking Off procedures
- Compliance monitoring
- Accident and incident reporting
- Health surveillance
For construction works under CDM 2007 the duties imposed on the client, the contractor, and any sub-contractor are more specific.
What do you think? We'd love to hear your comments
(The views expressed in this article, are not necessarily those held by Allen & York)
