LUCKY OR GOOD

Today’s contractor workforce provides an important role of support to any energy company’s daily operations. Contract companies perform various services from general construction to extremely technical tasks in support. Companies work hard to hire productive personnel, technically skilled crafts persons, and employees who care about working safely. Yet, contract companies’ safety performance and success vary. How do hiring companies evaluate the safety performance of their contractors to ensure they’re hiring good companies who work hard at being safe versus those companies who do little in safety and rely on being lucky.

The following is Industry best practices in how a hiring company may evaluate their contractors and/or subcontractors safety performance. One starts by reviewing contractor’s pre-qualifications and previous safety performance through examining past safety metrics. The initial item is the Experience Modification Rate (EMR) with a target of usually 1.0 or less. EMR is a company’s workers compensation experience compared to the industry average. This comparison when low usually is a good indicator for better safety performance. The most common measure used in industry is evaluating a company’s TRIR (Total Recordable Incident Rate). TRIR is the number of recordable workplace injuries per a standard number of employees hours. Typically, the TRIR receives more daily attention and for some hiring companies may be the only review on safety performance. However, to ensure a company is good we must continue evaluating additional indicators such as the LTIR (Lost Time Injury Rate). LTIR is the number of days from work because of an incident. Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred (DART) which explains the number of days an employee misses work, restricted, or transferred job duties resulting from the incident and injury. A company’s safety Incident History, and Safety Citations and fines must be included to ensure the overall evaluation is completed. The evaluation of such key safety data provides oversight into the

Also considered is the contractor’s written safety programs. A contractor’s Written Programs must be developed based on their scope of work to be performed. Written Programs establish the Safety Management Systems to ensure structure, implementation, and execution. Written Programs provide contract employees’ risk tolerance and assessment, hazard control, and training. Written Programs ensure contract employees understand their role and tasks, as well as the company’s risk tolerance, and company safety manual prior to executing tasks in the field. All contract employees must train on their Written Programs; and hiring companies must verify the adequacy and frequency of such training to verify good safety performance.

As a best practice, Contract companies need to be tracking all safety incidents, near misses, and safety concerns reported by employees. The company’s investigation process must be identified to investigate incidents, provide a thorough and effective investigation, and to be conducted in such a manner that provides corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence. The hiring company will evaluate the contractor’s investigation process, investigation reports, and corrective actions to verify their effectiveness. Corrective actions must be closed in a timely manner.

Program Safety Audits should be performed to assess the contractor’s programs, safety systems, and ensure regulation requirements. Audits provide a means to review Key Performance Indicators (KPI), Behavior-Based Safety Programs (BBS), and Job Safety Analysis (JSA’s). Stop Work Authority programs, which empower company personnel to stop work if an unsafe condition or practice is observed. Verification of the program’s implementation and effectiveness provides continuation into the tools and programs safety process.

Utilizing all the key safety performance indicators, programs, and items as a safety evaluation best practice gives insight into the safety performance of a contract service organization. A review of these items ensures the hiring company is making an informed and good rather than relying on being lucky.