National Summit on Contractor Safety

Summary Report

February 2007

FOREWORD

On October 30-31, 2006, approximately 85 representatives from business, labor and government participated in the first ever National Summit on Contractor Safety to focus on the prevention of contract worker fatalities and serious injuries. The Duke Energy Foundation and IRC are providing participants of the conference a summary of the Summit's in-depth discussions, findings and recommendations, as well as a compendium of best practices which were provided by Summit participants.

Based on the Summit findings and recommendations, Phase II of the Duke Energy Foundation and IRC continued efforts on Contractor Safety will support research focused on improving contractor safety performance and reducing serious injury and death to contract workers. This research will be conducted in a structured fashion and prioritized to address the most serious information gaps first, with an objective of ensuring the practical application of the research results.

The following process is planned for Phase II:

1. The attached report will serve as a basis for developing the questions that the research should answer and for translating them into discrete workable research projects resulting in significant practical benefits. Projects will be prioritized and the Duke Energy Foundation and IRC will set the research agenda;
2. Based on this agenda, proposals for executing the research projects will be developed. These proposals will outline the individual efforts in sufficient detail to insure appropriate issues are being addressed in an effective manner., and;
3. The projects will be issued and managed to ensure an optimum return.

Please contact Scott Madar, scott.madar@orcww.com, if you have any questions concerning the report.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Purpose. The National Contractor Safety Summit was organized to examine a growing concern that contract workers experience a disproportionately large share of serious injuries and fatalities on the job. The purpose of the Summit was to explore ways to prevent contractor fatalities and serious injuries by identifying 1) key barriers to high safety performance; 2) good practices for contractor safety management and 3) areas of future research and development that would contribute to improved contractor safety performance. The broad cross-section of business, government and labor representatives who participated in this intense two-day conference strongly supported the Summit and its objectives.

Approach. The Summit employed an intense two-day format to identify key factors that contribute to contractor loss and develop solutions to those problems. This first-ever multi-industry and multidisciplinary dialogue engaged representatives from different phases of the contracting process. Representatives from business, labor, and government participated in the dialogue along with safety and health, operations, and procurement staff from both host and contract employers who shared their unique perspectives of contract work and the contracting process. The dialogue provided insights into the real factors that undermine contractor safety performance. Summit participants then developed solutions and recommendations to address those factors.

Trends. There was consensus among Summit participants that reliance on contractors for a widening range of job tasks and functions appears to be a long-term trend and that the challenges of managing these multiple contractor relationships are complex. This expanding use of contract, contingent and temporary workers to perform an increasing variety of functions and tasks, and the resulting shifts in the nature of the relationships between a company and the workforce performing this work on its behalf, are an important part of the new business environment that the Summit participants agreed has serious implications for the safety and health of the affected workers. Most significantly, the Summit revealed that many companies, including leading businesses that have achieved excellent safety and health performance with respect to their own employees, continue to experience contractor fatalities and serious injuries.

Data. The Summit also confirmed that a fundamental obstacle to performing a comprehensive evaluation of the scope and seriousness of contractor safety issue is the lack of any existing data base at the national, state, industry or even in most instances, the individual company level, that would allow for an accurate assessment of the safety performance of contract workers. Injury or other safety data are in almost all cases maintained based only on a worker's relationship with his or her employer and are not configured to provide insights into injuries and fatalities experienced by contract workers in contract situations.

Barriers. The Summit evoked widespread agreement on the principal barriers to strong contractor safety performance. They fell into four cross-cutting general categories: Safety Culture, Pre-Job Contractor Evaluation and Selection, Project Management and Effective Accountability Strategies and Processes. A consistent theme across these four areas was that from a variety of perspectives, including legal and organizational, the nature of the host employer-contractor relationship often makes it difficult to assure that critical safety management system elements are effectively implemented during all phases of each project. This manifests itself perhaps most clearly in the many impediments to assuring that all levels of the workforce managing and performing the project exhibit a strong safety culture throughout all phases of the work.

In the Pre-Job Evaluation and Selection phase, impediments related to culture may include misaligned values and messages between the host employer and contractor, especially around costs and schedule pressures, that may lead to gaps in safety; prequalification systems and criteria that are not robust and do not accurately reflect a contractor's safety performance and culture; failure to make explicit, either in the contract or during communications with the contractor, what the expectations are regarding safety; and a lack of adequate programs for attracting, evaluating, training and developing, and retaining a cadre of skilled and experienced workers.

During the Project Management phase, the impediments encountered at the Pre-Job stage may be compounded by issues such as high turnover in contract jobs, an inexperienced and workforce unfamiliar with the risks of the job, an aging workforce more susceptible to injury, and scarce replacements for skilled trades. In addition, according to many Summit participants, front line supervisors (host employer and contractor), who must be the drivers of the safety programs typically are not ready for this role. Further, language barriers and transcultural differences are becoming major issues that can affect all aspects of the host employer - contractor - worker relationship, especially involving risk perception, risk acceptance, and training.

Finally, the failure to have effective Contractor Accountability Strategies and Processes also undermines contractor safety performance. Too often, contractor safety performance metrics are inadequate or not meaningful. The lack of meaningful performance data makes it extremely difficult to assess real performance and hold workers, supervisors, and managers accountable. Even when safety expectations are clearly identified, the contractor is not always held accountable when the expectations are not met. Host employers must be willing to enforce the safety performance provisions of the contract.

Overcoming the barriers. A threshold issue that must be addressed by host employers that wish to improve their contractor safety performance is whether they are committed to assuring that their contract workers are entitled to the same levels of safety and health protection as their own employees. The candid admission that there is often a "double standard" for contract workers was a recurring theme of the Summit and was attributed in part to the conventional "hands off" approach to contractor management encouraged by traditional legal concerns about co-employment and other potential liabilities.

Summit participants identified a variety of strategies, tools and techniques for managing contract situations that present the potential for serious injury and death. Among the most critical is creating a shared culture of safety by demonstrating leadership, setting expectations and investing in a safety management process that assures continual improvement. Host employers must be explicit that safety is a primary value and that the resources will be available to avoid shortcuts and assure a safe project. Worker safety and health must be a critical factor in the prequalification and bidding process and safety expectations must be clearly articulated by the host and contract employers and understood by the contract workforce. Pre-job planning and risk assessment must also be assured. It is essential to assure that the contract workforce has the necessary skills and training to perform safely - host employers should evaluate and identify training programs early in the process and the contract should clarify the scope of and responsibility for training, including language requirements.

Research Priorities. One of the primary goals of the Summit was to identify and prioritize areas where additional data, knowledge, effective practices and research would contribute to reducing serious injuries and fatalities among contract workers. There was broad agreement that areas with the most potential for fruitful research include:

• Culture Identify drivers & determine how to influence/transfer culture (through the contracting process and other means)
• Training - Develop and test best practice training strategies for contract workers and those who supervise them
• Prequalification - Identify and test techniques for assessing contractor safety performance and culture
• Accountability & Rewards - Identify effective tool to promote and ensure contractor safety performance
• Data & Metrics – Develop data on contractor loss by industry, job type, etc.; identify and test leading and trailing indicators.

FOREWORD
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
I. Introduction
II. Summit Goals and Organization
III. Critical Summit Instructions, Parameters and Definitions
A. Breakout Sessions
B. Key Definitions and Terms
IV. Summit Results
A. Problems and Barriers Leading To Serious Injuries and Fatalities Among Contract Workers
1. Safety Culture
2. Competing priorities and values
3. Prequalification process
4. Unstated and inconsistent expectations
5. Workforce issues
6. Leadership commitment
7. Double standard
8. Impact of immediate supervisor
9. Communication
10. Language and cultural barriers (social)
11. Training of workers and supervisors
12. Accountability
13. Data and Metrics
14. Risk identification, perception and acceptance
B. Solutions
1. Creating a shared culture of safety
2. Managing Competing Values and Messages
3. Prequalification of contractors and sub-contractors
4. Double Standard for Contract Workers versus Host labor
5. Ineffective execution of safety and health at off-site locations
6. Language and Cultural Barriers to Safe Performance
7. Training
8. Improve Contractor Incident Investigations and Sharing of Reports
9. Inadequate and not meaningful metrics/data
C. Research Needs / Knowledge Gaps
Research Needs and Knowledge Gaps Reported Out by Groups
1. Managing Competing Values and Messages
2. Pre-qualification
3. Expectations
4. Economics and Contracts
5. Future workforce
6. Drivers for safe behavior and safety performance
7. Management
8. Communication
9. Understanding of Risk
10. Training
11. Contractor Data and Performance Metrics
Priorities as Identified Using Audience Response System
V. Compendium of Effective Strategies

Introduction

A growing number of companies, across a broad range of industry sectors, are increasingly relying on contract workers to perform a variety of functions, often assignments traditionally done by regular payroll workers. According to John Howard, Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the number of long-term employment relationships is declining, while the contractor workforce is expanding. In many cases, these growing ranks of contract workers are assigned the most hazardous tasks.
These long-term trends are presenting the business community and safety professionals with a powerful new challenge: protecting the safety and health of the contractor workforce.
While a number of reasons may account for why this issue has - until now - attracted little attention, the lack of reliable and comprehensive safety data on contract workers has been a crucial factor. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not keep injury and illness information on contractors, and even reliable fatality data for these workers are hard to come by. In addition, employers in the US are not required by law to maintain such data on their contractors and longstanding legal concepts involving "principal-agent" relationships have traditionally encouraged "arms-length" dealing between host employers and contractors.
Many companies, however, are reevaluating how best to assure effective contractor performance in order to meet the challenges of managing multiple, complex contractual relationships that keep growing in importance. Unfortunately, many of these companies are also discovering far too many fatalities and injuries among their contract employees. Despite the difficulty of obtaining reliable data, NIOSH's Dr. Howard has confirmed that in the mining, construction, and administrative sectors the fatality rate for contractors is higher than the overall average for workers.
This is the context for the Duke Energy Foundation's decision to underwrite a National Summit on Contractor Safety ("Summit") on October 30 and 31, 2006 in Washington, DC. The Duke Foundation awarded a grant to Industrial Relations Counselors, a not-for-profit research and educational institution affiliated with ORC Worldwide. Industrial Relations Counselors commissioned ORC Worldwide to plan and coordinate the Summit.

Summit Goals and Organization

The essential goal of the Summit was to explore how to improve contractor safety and prevent serious workplace injuries and deaths suffered by contract workers by identifying: 1) key challenges to high contractor safety performance; 2) strategies, methods and effective practices for meeting the challenges and improving contractor safety management; and 3) critical areas requiring research (which will be conducted under Phase 2 of the grant) that will contribute to improved contractor safety performance.
To achieve these objectives, Summit organizers identified and invited approximately 80 individuals representing a unique cross-section of business, labor and government. Participants included safety and health, operations, and procurement experts from host and contract employers in different industries with different kinds of contractor operations and environments. In addition, representatives from key labor organizations and government agencies participated. The Summit's Agenda emphasized a "think tank" approach with hands-on working sessions.
Both days of the event began with presentations by leaders from the business and government communities. After the initial plenary talks, participants were divided into breakout groups with specific charges.
At the end of each day, the breakout groups reported the fruits of their discussion back to all Summit participants, who then provided feedback in plenary session.
The Summit concluded with a comprehensive list of the best thinking from the participants about how to overcome the obstacles to contractor safety. In addition, attendees used a sophisticated electronic voting system to rank the ten contractor safety topics most in need of further research.

Critical Summit Instructions, Parameters and Definitions

Breakout Sessions

For efficiency, the Summit breakout sessions were organized around two variables: location of the work (onsite or offsite) and degree of host employer oversight (independent or integrated). Summit participants were instructed that problems and solutions may be unique to the variables assigned to the breakout session, or they may be applicable to other host employer - contractor relationships as well.
Over the course of the two-day Summit, participants were asked to discuss at a minimum the following questions in their breakout sessions:
Focus of Day One

• Focusing on all phases of the host employer/contractor relationship, what are the key challenges to keeping contract workers safe?
  • What problems or barriers limit a host employer's ability to ensure the safety of their contract workers?
  • What problems or barriers prevent contractors from keeping their own workers safe?
  • Which of these problems or barriers are most critical?
  • What are the causes of the critical problems or barriers?

Focus of Day Two

• What are effective strategies, methods, and best practices for keeping contract workers safe?
  • What can be done to overcome the most critical problems or barriers?
  • What are participants currently doing that works?
  • What other strategies might be helpful?
  • What appear to be the most promising strategies? Why?
    
• In what areas would research be the most helpful?
  • What information, data, or research that does not currently exist is necessary to help improve contractor safety?
  • What are the most pressing research needs?

The focus of the group deliberations was on all phases and aspects of the host employer/contractor relationship that can have an impact (positive and negative) on the safety of contract workers. This relationship can be affected by a number of variables including such things as:

• the length of the contract,
• location of the work,
• type of work,
• skills required,
• degree of host employer and contractor management oversight,
• degree of risk,
• whether it is standard or non-standard work, and
• size of the crew performing the work.

There are a number of critical elements that can affect the host employer/contractor relationship including

• prequalification/selection,
• delineation of roles and responsibilities,
• worker engagement,
• risk identification and control,
• training,
• communication, and
• assessing conformance with requirements, specifications, and expectations.

Key Definitions and Terms

There could be lengthy debate to determine the precise definition for key terms that were used during these deliberations. However, to maximize the time available for problem solving, the following "working" definitions were provided to Summit participants:

1. Type of employer
   • Contractor: A company or individual that performs services for a client, in exchange for a fee, but who is not an employee of the client, including subcontractors
   • Contract Workers: Employees of the contractor or the subcontractor
   • Host employer: The company for whom a contractor performs work
     
2. Degree of management oversight
   • Integrated: Contract workers primarily under the oversight, management or control of the host employer
   • Independent: Contract workers primarily under the oversight, management or control of someone other than the host employer
     
3. Location of work
   • Onsite: Work performed at a host employer-owned or -operated facility, with host employees involved in day-to-day operations
   • Offsite: All other work not meeting the definition of onsite

Summit Results

Problems and Barriers Leading To Serious Injuries and Fatalities Among Contract Workers

During the Summit breakout sessions the five groups addressed the problems and barriers that negatively impact the safety of contract worker leading to fatalities and serious injuries. These five groups approached their assignment focused on three work relationships:

• Onsite independent workers
• Offsite independent workers, and
• Integrated workers.

Perhaps not surprisingly the breakout groups for all three categories identified many of the same problems and for that reason the problems are identified and described here without regard to the work relationship model.
The following list identifies the key problems that were reported by the five groups. Following the list is a summary of the discussions of each issue that took place during the breakout sessions. Issues are organized according to the flow the contracting process: pre-job selection and project configuration; project management (application of management systems and implementation processes); and post-job performance assessment, accountability and recognition.

• Overarching

1. Safety Culture
   

• Pre-job selection and project configuration

1. Competing priorities and values
2. Prequalification process
3. Unstated and inconsistent expectations
4. Workforce issues
   

• Project management

1. Leadership commitment
2. Double standard
3. Impact of immediate supervisor
4. Communication
5. Language / cultural barriers (social)
6. Risk identification, perception and acceptance
7. Training of workers and supervisors
   

• Post-job

1. Accountability
2. Metrics

Safety Culture

The subject of safety culture emerged as the overarching theme that impacts nearly all of the other problems identified. In general, "safety culture" is taken to mean the level of commitment to worker safety as a basic corporate value at all levels of the organization. At the Summit, the discussions reflected inconsistencies between the safety culture of a corporation with respect to its own employees and with respect to contract workers. For example, many host employers tolerate non-compliance with safety regulations, do not track their contractor workforce loss data, and do not empower the contract workers to refuse unsafe work. Host employers may blame legal issues - co-employment and liability concerns - as the reason they treat contract workers as they do.

This safety culture inconsistency affects host employers and contractors in many ways. Host employers are often faced with certain "realities" associated with the contractors they hire. For example, Summit participants noted that many smaller contractors in particular are often more focused on growing their business by winning bids and are less focused on establishing or maintaining their own company's safety culture. The host employer must either refrain from selecting this contractor (not always an option due to geographic realities - may be the only contractor in the area capable of doing the job); attempt to change the safety culture of this contractor; or live with this contractor and hope that no one gets hurt. Since culture change takes time, most host employers cannot make an impact on the culture of contractors performing small short duration jobs. Similarly, contractors cannot transfer their culture to employees hired for short duration jobs.

In order to find contractors with good safety cultures, host employers are looking for "differentiators" of culture. Specifically, host employers desire a method to prequalify a group of contractors based on culture but Summit participants were not aware of what contractor metrics are indicative of a strong safety culture.

Safety culture issues affect contractors and contract workers as well as host employers. Contractors must try to adapt to often differing safety cultures of many host employers, which can be confusing to the contractor workforce. For example, a contractor will train his workforce to the first customer's safety program and then may have to train the same workers to another customer's safety program a short time later. The significant differences between the first customer's safety program and the second customer's safety program leads to uncertainty among the contractor's workforce as to what is truly safe.

In other instances, contractors are often faced with customers (host employers) that do not value safety and make it clear from the beginning. These customers value low cost, on-time projects over safe projects. This can have a negative impact on a contractor attempting to improve its own company's safety culture because the contract workers are getting messages from the host employer that safety is not a top priority.

Some host employers and contractors may view the cost of implementing a good safety culture as prohibitively high, especially contractors who might lose jobs due to costs. However, many larger contractors who have invested in improving their own safety cultures, which can be more rigorous than their clients', argued that while the short-term costs may be high, they usually result in significant long-term savings for the contractor.

Safety culture is closely tied with a number of the problems described in greater detail below.

Competing priorities and values

Competing values and messages, especially around costs and schedule pressures, may lead to gaps in safety. Production costs and schedules are often perceived to be in conflict with safety interests and may often have a higher priority for management. For example, incentives and rewards are typically aligned with cost and schedule objectives. Appropriate safety incentive plans are often missing.

The competition between cost and schedule demands and safety affects all aspects/all phases of the projects. Return on investment (ROI) for safety is not included in the decision process since there is a general lack of understanding of the true costs of injuries (see metrics). The ROI for safety is not seen.

Recognition of these realities is not "built into" the contract. Sometimes host employers try to incorporate the issues after the contract is completed. Contractual systems or terms look only at bottom-line base costs, without regard to safety considerations. Electronic bid processes that exclude a safety component may have a negative impact on the situation since contractors with low bids may win the job, but lack the resources to ensure worker safety.

In some cases where safety was included in the selection process, a host employer's commitment to safety weakens after the contract is awarded. The host employer then pressures the contractor to complete the work on-time and under-budget.

Prequalification process

Selecting the right contractor by establishing standards for prequalification is key to the proper selection of contractors who will operate safely. However, many host employers have poor systems for prequalifying and selecting contractors. Many host employers do not perform pre-job risk assessments which would aid them in determining appropriate criteria for the qualification of the contractors and the contract workers. Systems for measuring qualifications of contractors are not robust, particularly in fast ramp-up situations, and the prequalification criteria do not accurately reflect a contractor's safety performance.

Prequalification processes vary from one host employer to another and are not consistent in their selection criteria. Many prequalification criteria are simply a measure of a contractor's compliance with regulatory requirements. In addition, the prequalification process is not scalable for the size of the project. Many projects are short duration small projects and yet the prequalification process can be extremely lengthy. There is no consistency across companies, states, or countries. In addition, such standards that do exist are often diluted by the practice of subcontracting, to which the prequalification process may not extend.

In some organizations the prequalification and selection process are not separate and distinct but rather blended into one process. The process is typically controlled by a procurement department within the organization. There is no feedback between the safety and health professionals and the procurement folks. Therefore, procurement personnel may not know that a particular contractor who submitted the lowest bid is not a wise selection for safety reasons.

The low bid system is extremely detrimental to the safety process. The host employer's safety and health professionals are often pressured to accept the lowest bidder and to accept suppliers that do not meet the safety criteria in the prequalification process. They are then asked to develop specialized safety programs for these under-qualified contractors.

Lastly, host employers typically fail to establish and cultivate relationships with good, proven contractors with whom they have had positive experiences. These longer term relationships can be beneficial to both entities beyond the prequalification process. The long term relationships can lead to shared expectations, and alignment of safety cultures.

Unstated and inconsistent expectations

Host employers may not clearly spell out, either in the contract, or during communications with the contractor, what the expectations are regarding safety. Host employers must remember that expectations for safety performance should be driven by the customer not by the contractor. Without clearly stipulated safety expectations, neither party has a clear understanding of what a successful safety program really is. Since the safety cultures of the host employer and the contractor rarely align (see Safety Culture) the two parties will likely have inconsistent expectations around safety performance if they are not made explicit. In other words, there may be different "standards of care" for safety.

Occasionally, when the host employer sets low expectations, contractors and their workers may "lower the bar" to meet these expectations, resulting in poor safety performance.

In addition, enforcement of safety rules and procedures often lacks teeth - non-compliance is commonplace and accepted. Rules are not communicated to contract workers consistently or in a way that assures their understanding. There is can be a dilution of these safety expectations as you go down the chain of authority, which is often due to poor communication (see Communication).

Workforce issues

Both host employers and the contractors are losing experienced workers and the inability to sustain an adequate and qualified workforce is particularly challenging. Problems include high turnover in contract jobs, a rapidly changing workforce, an aging workforce, and scarce replacements for skilled trades. Host employers often look to contractors to fill the gaps created by these problems. Contractors are then faced with a number of challenges caused by this dynamic workforce.

Besides the aging workforce, which results in a natural attrition of the available workers, many contract workers are employed or choose to be employed only for the duration of the project, sometimes for less time. Despite this reality, many contractors lack adequate programs and resources for attracting, evaluating, training and developing, and retaining workers. In part, this may be related to the wage structure failing to keep up with the economy and the lack of clearly defined career paths for contract workers. Programs to promote and train workers on a supervisory track may not be in place. This increased turnover in their workforce requires the contractors to expend inordinate amounts of time and resources training new hires.

Other contract workers choose to leave their job or even their chosen vocation to seek work that satisfies their desire for a better work-life balance. Other reasons may include social issues. Contractors may hire new workers who decide that the physical labor often associated with contract work is 'too hard' and choose to move on to a different profession. Sometimes, host employers hire away the more experienced contract workers to supplement their own workforce, which then forces the contractor to find new employees.

Workforce supply issues necessitate the hiring of workers who are transient (short-term) or non-English speaking, or both, in many locations. Transient workers who migrate to where the best paying work is located and non-English speaking workers pose unique problems for contractors. Oftentimes the contractor management structure may not be in place to manage a transient workforce or to handle the challenges associated with a non-English-speaking workforce (see Language and cultural barriers).

Other contractors and host employers are faced with a limited pool of skilled workers in a particular geographic area from which to choose. Their opportunity to be very selective is severely restricted and in some cases eliminated entirely. This geographic restriction may force a host employer or a contractor to hire someone that they would not have hired in another circumstance.

The limitations of the available contractor workforce exacerbate the problems with maintaining safety skills. There is a greater demand for short-term employees, spurred by the rapid growth of the subcontracting business. Subcontractors are hard to reach and it is difficult to understand who they are, which leads to inconsistency in safety capability. It is less likely that they will be able to instill awareness and training of day-to-day safety rules in their workforce. This group has a greater need for training, indoctrination and clarity of expectations for safety performance.

Leadership commitment

The frequent lack of executive leadership commitment from the host employer toward contract worker safety was among the most critical concerns expressed by Summit participants. Executive leadership commitment is key to obtaining the buy-in of the rest of the organization; and without it both internal and external employees do not fully embrace their safety roles and responsibilities with respect to the contractor workforce.

The underlying reasons for the failure of executive leadership of the host employer to clearly commit to injury and illness prevention of contract workers may include a number of factors. Legally, there may be contract language that seems to require an arms-length relationship between the host employer and the contractor. This usually involves placing a limitation on the day-to-day involvement of the host employer with the contractor's workers and safety program. In addition, host employers may not clearly spell out, either in the contract, or during communications with the contractor, what the expectations are regarding safety. Unfortunately, this can lead to conflict and uncertainty about the extent of the host employer's involvement and overall responsibility for the safety of contract workers. Taking responsibility for the safety of contract employees is often seen by host employers as a liability issue - often it is not clear what the appropriate roles of host supervisors and managers are.

On occasion the lack of host employers' leadership commitment can manifest itself in attempts to manage different risks with "one size fits all" policies without regard to the population exposed or the risks associated with the particular job to be completed by the contract workers. Host employers may need to provide different types of oversight depending on the type of job being performed. In addition, without executive leadership commitment, it may be difficult to implement corporate programs in specific situations, such as when required to quickly hire and train workers for a particular job

Host companies have not been empowering contractors and their workers with the right to refuse unsafe work or to stop work. This requires executive leadership commitment to the safety of contract workers.

Double standard

Some host employers will candidly admit that they apply a double standard - they do not view it as their obligation to protect contract workers to the same level that their own employees are protected. These host employers may feel that the contractors need to take responsibility for their contract workers and the host employer will take responsibility for its own workers. The cliché 'To each his own' accurately describes the approach many host employers take. In large measure this attitude is supported by traditional legal precepts that encourage a "distancing" between the host and the contractor and by the notion that contractors are often hired to do specialized work that the host employer is not qualified to oversee effectively. This attitude manifests itself in the way in which host employers approach contract workers - there are different standards applied to their performance, little or no data is collected for contract workers, and what data is collected is often not shared with the contractor. In many cases, the host employer holds none of its own employees "accountable" for injuries experienced by contractors.

While the double standard applies to all contract situations, this double standard may be most noticeable when looking at integrated temporary contract workers (temps). These workers are often supplied by a temporary agency and work side-by-side with the host employer's employees. Yet the temps may not enjoy the same level of protection as the host employer's employees. Temporary contract workers usually receive different training, are supervised differently, and receive different communication from the host employer. They are often not required to undergo as much pre-employment or post-incident scrutiny, such as background checks and drug-testing, respectively, as the host employer's employees. And temps may even be provided with different equipment and personal protective equipment than the other employees.

Impact of immediate supervisor

At the other end of the leadership spectrum, but often equally important, line supervisors are often the only daily contact with management contract workers may have. Supervisory expectations, rather than official processes and rules, often determine the performance of contract workers since these rules may not filter down to the worker level. This is unfortunate because supervisor skill levels are often inadequate due to inconsistent training. This can result in a work atmosphere that encourages or overlooks worker nonconformance with safety requirements.

Equally important, the host employer's supervisors can have a significant impact on the contractor supervisor's attitude especially when determining the project priority - whether it is on-time, under-budget or safe. Both front line supervisors (host employer and contractor) must be the drivers of the safety programs but typically are not ready for this role, according to many Summit participants.

Communication

Communication appears to be an especially big challenge in larger companies, particularly when those companies are global (see Language and Cultural Barriers). Beyond language and cultural obstacles, communication issues cover a wide range of items including inconsistent messages regarding safety, companies' inability or lack of desire to share experiences with specific contractors, culture-related reluctance to communicate on safety issues with contractors, and even the lack of internal feedback to purchasing departments on the performance of specific contractors and the usefulness of prequalification data provided.

Unless required by the contract, most host employers have little or no control over the selection of subcontractors. This results in limited or nonexistent communication between the host employer and the subcontractor. Because of this lack of host employer - subcontractor communication, contractual requirements and expectations rarely reach the subcontractors and their workers.

Effective internal company communications are often lacking as well. Many host employers do not have an internal communication system to share experiences regarding particular contractors among the procurement personnel at different sites. Without sharing this information, there is no way to leverage their collective experiences.

Ineffective multi-level communication throughout both organizations can be detrimental in a number of ways. Risk communication between host employers and contractors, within host employers, and within contractors is often inadequate and as a result the messages may never reach the contract workers directly. When combined with breakdowns in interpersonal communication larger problems arise. For example, many people have reservations about approaching another person about unsafe work practices, especially when it crosses company lines, in the absence of a specific requirement and process for doing so.

Two way communications between contractors and host employers may not exist and problems can arise when responsibilities are muddled. If a contract does not clearly spell out who is responsible for safety programs, such as incident investigations, near miss investigations, injury and illness reporting, then there is confusion between the contractor and the host employer. In many cases it is not always clear whether there is a host employer representative responsible for the safety performance of the contractors.

Language and cultural barriers (social)

Language barriers and transcultural differences are major issues especially for global companies that can affect all aspects of the host employer - contractor - worker relationship. Risk perception, risk acceptance, and training all may be affected by this issue.

Workers in some cultures may more readily accept the risks of the job and may be ridiculed by their colleagues for using safety equipment - there may be a 'macho'-factor at play. Other workers may be afraid to report poor safety conditions. In other instances workers may not have received training, or may not have understood the training unless it was provided in their native language. For those contractors who regularly work with non-English speakers and may have translated training documents into Spanish, for example, there typically are no provisions in place for communications during an emergency. Non-English speaking workers will not be able to communicate, i.e., receive instruction or general information, in the event of an emergency.

One positive note for integrated temporary contract workers is that they are typically used in less hazardous jobs as compared to other contract workers. In addition, it was reported that many full time integrated contract workers do not see the differences in training and are often trained alongside the host employer employees.

Training of workers and supervisors

The adequacy and consistency of training are problems in many ways. There are no minimum training requirements or qualification standards for most contract workers. When working with a temporary or transient workforce, contractors cannot reliably determine each individual's level of training. Host employers are also unable to determine or verify the contract workforce's level of experience or training in many instances. Since there is no database or process to verify workers' status in job safety knowledge or to determine if they have had the necessary training, workers may be forced to repeat training in many cases. In other cases the training does not reflect reality, leaving gaps between what workers face on the job and what their training covered. Some workers may not receive the most basic training because of incorrect assumptions. Other workers receive duplicative training which drains scarce resources including time and money.

There are a number of issues regarding responsibility for training, such as how much training should be provided by the host employer versus the contractor. Some contractors are not very effective at training their workers in the safety requirements of specific jobs or maintaining safety awareness among their workers. Host employers may avoid performing site specific training for contract workers as an attempt to avoid liability. Many host employers struggle with how to have programs that cover different types of contractors since "One size does not fit all." Host employers and contractors need to determine the correct balance of awareness information and actual training.

Supervisory training is overlooked in some instances. This is directly related to the impact that immediate supervisors have on the safety of the project, as discussed previously (see Impact of immediate supervisor).

Accountability

As discussed above, many host employers are not clearly stipulating their safety expectations for the contractors working for them. However, even when these expectations are clearly identified, the contractor is not always held accountable when the expectations are not met. This is a host employer failing and ultimately undermines the safety expectations to the point that the contractors may view them as irrelevant. Accountability is directly related to inconsistent expectations in that while a contract may include safety expectations, if these expectations are not monitored and enforced, then the contractor and contract workers receive a mixed message. This mixed message more than likely will be interpreted to mean that safety is not important and is only a paper requirement. Host employers must enforce the contract and the enforcement must have teeth. Many host employers are unwilling to approach contract workers about potential unsafe acts and many host employers are unwilling to throw a contractor off a job because of safety. This hesitancy to enforce the contract may sometimes be related to the workforce availability issues discussed previously (see Workforce Issues). In addition to host employer issues, many contractors do not hold their workers accountable for safety performance.

In some instances, enforcement of rules and requirements falls back on the host employer because of a contractor's inability to adequately address safety from a lack of knowledge, lack of resources, or lack of motivation. The host employer must then act as a supervisor when its ability to do oversight of contract employees may be limited legally.

Data and Metrics

Summit participants acknowledged a lack of data at the national, state and industry level to provide an accurate assessment of safety performance of contract workers. In addition, individual companies lack data for prequalification, driving and measuring performance and accountability purposes.

Contractor safety performance metrics are inadequate or not meaningful. Summit participants did not believe that the safety performance metrics accurately reflected the experiences their companies have had with contractors on the job. The lack of meaningful performance data makes it extremely difficult to assess real performance and hold workers, supervisors, and managers accountable.

The inability to assess a contractor's real-time performance exacerbates the problems associated with prequalification described above. If host employers cannot develop good prequalification and selection tools to weed out poorly performing contractors prior to awarding a contract and those same host employers can not sufficiently assess the contractor's performance while on the job, then the host employer may mistakenly award multiple contracts to the same poorly performing contractor.

Overall, there is a dearth of data regarding contract worker safety experiences. Nationally, data and information collection and management is a problem in that the rules and specifications for contract worker injury and illness data collection are not sufficient to capture a comprehensive picture of contractor safety performance. This lack of data contributes to the lack of understanding around the true cost of injuries.

Risk identification, perception and acceptance

The inability to properly recognize risk—or having the impression that unsafe conditions are safe—is seen as a major factor in injuries and fatalities to contract workers. Risk taking is not seen to be a matter of workers misbehaving, but rather may be simply a failure to identify the risks. This 'risk illiteracy', as one Summit participant described it, keeps these workers from taking the necessary steps to protect themselves.

Worker experience levels and overconfidence can influence worker risk perception. For example, a worker who has been taking shortcuts for years and not gotten hurt may perceive those shortcuts to be safe whether they really are or not. Ultimately, insufficient training and risk communication may be the cause of poor risk perception. A failure to understand how to properly apply risk assessment strategies may also contribute.

There are differences in perception of risk among individuals, crews and even companies. These differences may be caused by different levels and quality of training, different levels of expertise, or even different priorities. In some cases the level of risk considered acceptable varies among companies, projects, and individuals as well. This ultimately is tied to the company's safety culture and values and the true priorities on the project - on-time and under-budget performance or safety of workers.

In addition, poor incident investigations which often fail to get to the true root causes are a compounding factor. This may be due to the reluctance of operations management to participate in investigations of root cause issues. Because root cause analysis is perceived as difficult and time-consuming some supervisors and managers question the appropriateness of performing root cause analysis in many situations.

Note:
It should be acknowledged that one of the five groups believed that achieving superior safety performance was more challenging for offsite work than for onsite work although they recognized that many of the challenges affecting the safety performance of independent contract work offsite were shared by contractors working on-site. However, the group felt that offsite work was more dynamic as a result of the constantly changing work environment. That change sometimes makes risks harder to identify. In addition, management control and oversight are often more difficult to administer in offsite situations since the workers were usually more dispersed. Assessing real safety performance and holding people accountable also seemed more difficult in offsite projects. Finally many offsite workers experience the added fatigue and stress that result from sometimes traveling long distances to work. Consequently, the group felt that offsite contract work presented relatively greater S&H challenges than other contract arrangements since the management of these projects was more complex and more reliance had to be placed on the judgment, training and experience of the individual worker.

Solutions

Each of the five groups was asked to address one specific problem identified on the first day of the Summit. After identifying solutions to that problem they were free to move onto other problems identified by that group. The results outlined below represent a compilation of the most significant observations of the generated by the Summit participants.

Creating a shared culture of safety

How do you get to a shared belief and culture between owners and contractors?

• Host employers need to show leadership and set expectations and invest in the process of building safety. Expect that contract workers will be assured the same protections as the host employer's employees
  
• All levels of the organization have to become involved (senior management, mid-level supervisors, workers). Consistent messages must be provided at every level.
  
• Contractors need to change the mind-set at all levels, and importantly at the field level leadership by: developing leadership programs, training, and performing regular 360 evaluations. Messages from evaluations are discussed by senior management and shared with all levels of organization. Commitment to the process must be built creating an appetite for safety.
  
• Contractors and host employers should ensure that senior level discussions include safety as a regular topic, e.g., CEO meetings on safety on a regular basis. Mid-level staff as well as field-level staff should have the same message and talk to each other about safety. The relationships between host-employer and contractor need to be built at an early stage to build parallel messages in contractor and host-employer organizations.
  
• It will take as much time and resources to do this as it takes to build host employer's safety program. It has to be done with a sense of urgency.
  Host employer standards should be identified. Systems should be in place to improve the safety performance of contractors who were selected for other specific reasons.
  
• Host employers need standardized, structured, systematic, disciplined process for risk assessment to assess project and potential contractors
  
• Host employers should develop a culture of full disclosure of risks
  
• In addition to identifying gaps, must identify risk mitigation strategies
  

Managing Competing Values and Messages

"Value messages" that emphasize the company's dedication to safety should be incorporated in all stages of pre-contracting discussions, contracting, and job implementation.
Values should be instilled so the choices people make are the right ones (this applies to host employer, contract foreman, contract employee)

• Factors that influence choices include legal issues, cost, schedule, familiarity with the site, and procurement. Safety must be first on this list.
• Accurate expectations about safety should be elicited so honest conversations can occur and host and contractor can get aligned around safety goals.
• The partner relationship between contractor and host employer is a value. Contractors and host employers should make safety and design decisions together.
• Values should be reinforced by doing pre-job briefs every day, not just at the beginning of the job. Messages should be continuously reinforced and team members given the ability to monitor and enforce. (Contractors should do it, and host employers should allow it.)

Host employers should consider limiting the number of contractors, where feasible, and take the time and resources to build strong safety partnerships with that limited set of contractors (conversations, symposia, etc.).

Recognize breakdowns typically happen in first three months of work

• Host employers must be explicit that safety is a primary value and that they will spend the money needed for contractors to avoid short cuts that may negatively impact safety.
• Host employers and contractor supervisors must emphasize that no one arrives on the work site without understanding risks and getting appropriate training.
  • Job-site safety plan must be complete before work starts and contract workers arrive on site with no exceptions.
  • Recognize the site-specific issues and provide that specific training to everyone before they go to work (host employers must be willing to take the time, spend the money to make sure this happens)
• Host employers should identify hazards and risks and provide information to contractors prior to pre-bid meetings
• Project officers must build in time to negotiate and finalize contracts. Contractors are often a month or so "behind" when contracts are finalized. Contractors should take responsibility for not "diving in" and taking short cuts that can compromise safety when the timeline has changed. In other words, both host employer and contractor have joint responsibility around contract timelines.
  • The question, "Do these conversations mean that contractors won't get work in the future?" must be put to rest by the host employer
  • Hosts should value and reward contractors that bring up safety issues
  • Hosts should not over-ride contractor warnings that something is not safe
    

Prequalification of contractors and sub-contractors

• An integrated national database on prequalification should be developed.
  
• Host employers should develop a consistent company policy on prequalification criteria.
  
• Host employers should make a commitment of time and money to review the data they have.
  
• A training program should be developed to teach host employers how to do an effective prequalification process.
  
• An ISO-type standard for construction safety management should be developed.
  
• A prequalification database that different projects can access should be established by host employers.
  
• Host employers should translate critical documents into native language(s) where applicable and supply them to bidders pre-bid.
  
• Host employers should ensure a means of communicating their requirements and needs to the contract workers who will actually be doing the work.
  
• Host employers should develop a system to capture performance feedback at the end of a project; use that information to inform their database.
  
• Host employers should verify the qualifications and safety and health performance of the short list of bidders by sending qualified personnel to audit those contractors performing work on someone else's site. Expectations are inconsistent and not aligned.
  
• Host employer should have a minimum preferred requirements document that it provides to suppliers. The host employer can provide addenda if a contractor cannot meet those requirements or needs to exempt something because of local laws or bargaining unit relations.
  
• Host employers should educate bidders on expectations and should communicate the process for holding contractors accountable for safety performance and make it clear that enforcement will occur.
  
• Host employer should create system to ensure that expectations are communicated at multiple points and should include the following: clarity in bid documents, on-site visits, involvement of host employer managers (ensure they understand expectations), and audit whether projects are ready to launch through the use of a project readiness check list.
  
• Host employer should conduct technical and commercial evaluations separately by appropriate experts, and combine them to arrive at final contract parameters that take into account safety considerations.
  
• Host employer should include the following steps when selecting contractors and contractor teams
  • Pre-qualify contractor to get on bid list (tools exist)
  • Contractor invited to submit proposal
  • Implement pre-bid programs - Host employer evaluate strength of the actual contractor team during bid stage
    
• Host employer should evaluate the specific contractor team regardless of the degree of process formality.
  

Double Standard for Contract Workers versus Host labor

• Acknowledge contractor value by rewarding contractors who demonstrate safety performance and by having leadership acknowledge the value of contractor workforce.
  
• Both host employers and contractors should terminate business relationships with poor safety performers.
  
• Workers of host employer and contractors should be empowered to stop hazardous work or take action to correct hazards.
  
• Host employers should integrate contract workforce into company systems and procedures to the greatest extent allowed by law, e.g., by providing employee orientation and training as to company culture and expectations.
  

Ineffective execution of safety and health at off-site locations

Host employers and contractors must address individual behavior and responsibility.

• A contractor training qualification and self audit process, including hazard analysis and risk mitigation, should be developed.
  
• Participants believe that the immediate supervisors have the most significant impact on worker safety performance. Therefore immediate supervisors are the lynch pin to assessing training needs, providing safety leadership and assessing needed follow-up.
  
• Industry group opportunities should be explored including, training opportunities, methods of attracting new employees (ex. high school initiative), and leveraging of resources to develop common expectations and standards.
  
• A partnership between contractors and host employers should be developed. The host employer should be willing to invest in safety training. Building alliance partnerships will allow for longer term relationships.
  

Language and Cultural Barriers to Safe Performance

Multiple strategies for conveying safety information should be used and site strategies to address non-English speaking employees should be developed, including:

• An English language requirement should be established contractually for projects conducted in the United States.
  
• Training should be conducted in multiple languages based on the needs at each work location.
  
• General literacy training/English as second language can be provided.
  
• Management and supervisors should be trained in varying cultures.
  
• Companies should create safe environment for declaring "I can't read".
  

Training

Training is inadequate, inconsistent, and of variable quality among host employers, contractors, and sub-contractors. To solve this problem, a system must be created by which there is universal access to training records. The system should be maintained by a third party, possibly modeled after the European system. The use of this system would allow companies to direct training resources to where they are needed. If a national system is not created, host employers should create an in-house system on training history that could be used among different projects.

• Basic/baseline training should be designed and made transferable among sites. More site-specific training modules could then be developed to supplement this basic training. OSHA 10-hour card should be mandatory
  
• Host employers should evaluate and identify training programs contractually during pre-qualification. Contracts should clarify the scope of training and who is responsible for the costs of developing and delivering training, as well as translation services.
  
• Host employers should seek training cost savings associated with safety investments.
  
• Language training for both host employer supervisors and contractors is needed.
  
• Host employer staff should be trained in the contractor management process so that they know their responsibilities, including how to manage safely.
  
• Host employers should develop a database of critical behaviors and lessons learned to share among facilities so that all facilities can benefit from their collective experiences.
  
• Videos or other media should be developed to share testimonials from injured workers to help others better perceive risk and be less risk blind

Improve Contractor Incident Investigations and Sharing of Reports

Host employers must require that all incidents will be investigated, and injuries and illnesses will be properly recorded. Host employers and contractors must commit the necessary resources for incident reporting/investigation.

• Host employers and contractors should jointly establish metrics to track performance.
  
• Investigations should include professionals with skill in root cause analysis.
  
• Key lessons learned during the investigations need to be identified and shared.
  
• Standardized formats for sharing investigations should be used.
  

Inadequate and not meaningful metrics/data

• Host employers and contractors need a good set of leading indicators at the national, organizational and site-specific levels to help understand behavior and predict events (e.g., management system in place, managing low level precursor events).
  
• Host employers and contractors need outcome data from which they can isolate contractor safety performance.
  
• Determine metrics that meet following standards rather than those that just 'feel good' to the organization The metrics must be meaningful to the organization, precise and accurate, immune to manipulation, and capable of being benchmarked. Lagging indicators such as OSHA or EMR metrics do not meet these criteria.
  

Research Needs / Knowledge Gaps

During the Summit breakout sessions the five groups were asked to identify areas where research would be the most helpful, what information, data, or research that does not currently exist is necessary to help improve contractor safety, and what are the most pressing research needs. The research needs and data gaps identified by the five groups are summarized below.

After the five groups shared their lists with the other Summit participants, all participants were asked to participate in a straw poll in which they were each allotted four votes. The participants were to identify the category or categories they thought contained the most pressing research needs by selecting up to four categories. They were allowed to vote for the same category more than one time. The results of the straw poll are presented below.

Research Needs and Knowledge Gaps Reported Out by Groups

The research needs and knowledge gaps identified and reported by the five groups are described below.

Managing Competing Values and Messages

• Methods for uniform application of existing tools, even among responsible host employers and contractors, need to be identified.
  
• The effectiveness of rewards for good performance needs to be examined, with special emphasis placed on if and when rewarding safe behavior is appropriate.
  
• Since there are many industry standard formats available, it is necessary to determine how to indoctrinate a team quickly. Is mandatory teambuilding for major projects or long-term agreements useful?
  
• A more consistent approach to partnering for safety as a learned behavior is needed. There are pockets of this around the country from both the host employer and the contractor communities. Would there be a benefit to having contractors disseminate "best practices" and include them in contracts with other host employers?

Pre-qualification

• Effectiveness pre-qualification systems and the use of standardized information in those systems should be examined to determine whether host employers should invest resources in these processes.
  
• The identification of good models for contractor selection and an assessment of their efficacy should to be evaluated.
  
• Tools to fit worker or contractor qualifications with the risks of the specific projects should be developed.
  
• Researchers should examine how to obtain better (more accurate) and standardized data. Special emphasis should be placed on understanding the degree of underreporting that occurs and whether workers compensation data should be included.
  

Expectations

• An assessment of the most effective communication strategies for expectations should be performed.
  
• Better interactive and enforcement methods for aligning the expectations of supervisors, contractors, and host employers are needed.
  

Economics and Contracts

• An examination of the long-term economic impact of changing the organizational culture to a safety culture should be performed and should include an analysis of the initial additional costs of extra training, inspections, and whether companies will make up that initial investment over time. How long will it take?
  
• Determine if it would be possible to incorporate safety culture and safety performance into contracts focusing primarily on whether there are means through which a contractor can be rewarded for a good safety culture. Determine if tools exist for the host employer to differentiate contractors on the basis of safety culture.
  

Future workforce

• An understanding of the demographics of the future workforce is needed.

Drivers for safe behavior and safety performance

• Research identifying drivers for safe behavior should target common elements from religious beliefs/practices and common elements from military practices. Tools to assess those drivers should then be developed.
  

Management

• Safety performance measures for executive and senior management (to assess the performance of management) are needed to assist in benchmarking against similar companies.
  
• Processes and tools for engaging and evaluating leadership of field supervisors are needed.
  

Communication

• Tools for host employers to provide feedback to contractors and vice versa are necessary.
  
• Specialized techniques that would help foremen to better explain tasks should be developed.
  

Understanding of Risk

• Standardized hazard identification and risk assessment methodologies should be developed.
  
• Increased outsourcing of historically core functions: contractual, safety, cost of risk is necessary.
  

Training

• Research into training effectiveness is critical. Both host employers and contractors would benefit from research that examined factors that affected types of training, delivery methods, and retention periods and whether training can truly affect attitudes and behaviors and lead to better safety performance.
  
• Examine the viability of establishing a national database to track training received by workers.
  
• A standard common training set for use by contractors and host employers should be identified. If none is available, a consensus standard should be considered as a means of standardizing the basic safety training requirements for contract workers. It should be determined whether industry-specific training strategies are necessary.
  
• A specialized training program should be created to provide skill sets around safety to the people who manage contract processes.
  
• Specialized processes or tools to build safety performance of lone crews are needed. These should focus on methods to accomplish safety goals when there is one person with limited supervisor interaction in a remote location.
  

Contractor Data and Performance Metrics

• Since it is clear that the NAICS classification system is not adequate for capturing parts of dangerous industries engaged in contract work, there is a need for a governmental review of the categories, and for the collection and evaluation of data and information from industry, NIOSH, and other parties, including data on serious injuries and fatalities and root cause analyses of fatal and serious injuries.
  
• What metrics are companies using that drive safety performance (trailing and leading) of contractors? What is working (e.g., score-cards)? What is not?
  
• Research is needed to determine whether leading indicators lead to safer job sites. The quality of currently used indicators should be evaluated to determine which commonly used leading indicators predict outcome metrics and what leading indicators actually indicate safety performance. If necessary, new leading indicators should be identified and developed with the goal of identifying metrics for intangibles such as leadership commitment.

Priorities as Identified Using Audience Response System

The above items identified by the Summit participants as research needs or knowledge gaps were reduced to ten categories so the Summit participants could utilize an electronic audience response system to prioritize the research needs and knowledge gaps. The prioritized results will not serve as a definitive priority list, but will help identify areas where future efforts should be focused.

1. Data- Develop data on contractor loss by industry, job type, etc.
2. Metrics - Identify and test leading and trailing indicators
3. Risk- Develop means to assess project risk re: demographics of current and future workforce
4. Culture- Identify drivers & determine how to influence/transfer culture (through contracting process, other means, etc.)
5. Accountability &Rewards - Identify effective tool to promote contractor safety performance
6. Communication - Identify and test most effective communication strategies
7. Expectations - Identify and test best methods for aligning expectations
8. Best Practices - Evaluate selected best practices
9. Training - Develop and test best practice training strategies for contract workers and those who supervise them
10. Prequalification - Identify and test techniques for assessing contractor safety performance and culture!
    

Compendium of Effective Strategies

Each Summit participant was asked to share a company process, practice or procedure that they believe has successfully addressed one aspect of the challenges associated with the host employer - contractor relationship. These documents have been collected into an online compendium. All company identifiers have been stripped, unless otherwise requested, from all documents provided.
The compendium is located here.

Click here to download a copy of this report: National Summit on Contractor Safety Summary Report