As a contractor, your employees and subcontractors move from worksite to worksite and deal with a variety of workplace conditions throughout the year. Depending on your specialty, contractors will deal with a variety of work place conditions such as the height above ground, working on or near bodies of water, toxic chemicals or heavy machinery and equipment. Good safety procedures and practices are essential for dealing with specific workplace conditions and for handling materials, equipment, and the manual lifting heavy items.

Proper OSHA compliance and training is required to meet regulatory requirements and help promote a strong safety culture

Safety practices tent to focus too much on the injured employee’s unsafe acts rather than the entire chain of circumstances or company culture that led to the accident or unsafe act. Decoding and understanding the latent conditions that helped to create an accident is key to preventing more accidents.

Risk management and safety for contractors can be a particularly complex area, with varying state laws regarding who qualifies as a contractor and what responsibility the contracting company has for providing workers’ compensation.

An optimal approach should provide a good balance among:

• Adequate coverage placed for type of contracting risk
• Adequate risk analysis and risk mitigation strategies
• Reducing legal or contractual risk.