"Using outside contractors has important implications for you, both in quality control and risk management."

By R. Bruce Wright

Utilities in this program vary widely in their use of outside subcontractors. Some employ them extensively (In fact, one utility we have visited out-sources virtually all of its line work-- construction, maintenance and operations-- to the extent that they have no employee lineman at all!) while others try to avoid using subcontractors at all. Whether yours is one that uses subcontractors regularly, or one that tries hard to minimize the use of outside contractors, it is likely that you will use subcontractors at least occasionally, either to get specific niche expertise, or to provide support for your own workers on major projects.

Using outside contractors has important implications for you, both in quality control and risk management, each of which require careful consideration as part of your overall safety program. When Synebar’s consultants visit with you on behalf of our national insurance program, the topic of outside contractors frequently sparks discussion. We often present our view that you must carefully balance opposing needs in your relationships with subcontractors. We even published an article on this topic a year ago in the Apr May Jun, 2004 issue of RE-marks, called “Monitoring Outside Contractors’ Safe Work Practices,” in which Dean Wisecarver expressed some of our ideas on how and why you should try to stay alert to the conduct of your subcontractors work. It can be found in the index of this archive.

Recently, I visited a utility where the safety contact expressed strong concerns about asking subcontractors to follow the same safety practices as their distribution system required for its linemen, and about even conducting any work site inspections while the contractors’ people were at work. He told me that he had been given clear instructions to avoid doing anything like that, since this type of action could be turned back against him, and if anything went wrong, an injured party (either an employee of the contractor or a member of the public) could claim that the utility was “supervising” the contractor’s workers, and therefore had taken responsibility for things that went wrong.

Wow, that’s scary indeed. But, is that the whole story? Maybe not. Like most successful scare tactics, there is a kernel of truth to the advice, but it may not be a big a problem as many of us are led to believe.

One of the advantages of hiring outside subcontractors, as many of you recognize, is the fact that these contractors are usually responsible for the consequences of errors made by their own employees in the course of the work they do for you under the contract. It is also true that if you, as the hiring company, exert too much control over the details of how subcontractors do their work, it is possible to alter the relationship enough that you may be responsible for any errors committed by these contractors or their employees.

As we said in our original article, we think that a safety program that includes spot checking and monitoring contractors’ work in progress is both a sound business practice and a contractual right. For a balanced review of this issue from a legal viewpoint, written by an attorney, check out the article on construction safety in the January 2005 issue of Occupational Health & Safety Magazine, available online at the following Web address hotlink. (If for any reason the link is not active, just copy and paste the following line into your Web browswer's address line.)

http://ohsonline.com/Stevens/OHSPub.nsf/frame?open&redirect=http://ohsonline.com/stevens/OHSpub.nsf/PubArchive?openview

(Thanks and a tip of the hard hat to Jerry Gardner at United Power for bringing this article to our attention.)