Achieving the desired levels of safety and compliance is a major challenge in projects in heavy industry. On a large project, your job role likely entails managing multiple sites, multiple contractor companies and large numbers. All of these factors combine to increase the difficulties and complexity in safety management, from verifying all documentation is in order, to ensuring that every worker receives the appropriate training to keep them safe on-site and give them the tools to do their job. Contractor safety management software can accomplish all of these tasks.
The complexity of the job is one of the most underestimated aspects of being a safety manager on large projects. You are not just in charge of ensuring safety at one contractor company but a number of subcontractor companies too. These companies might all have different attitudes and standards when it comes to safety but ensuring a consistent level is vital to a project’s success. It is your responsibility that every company and contractor who doe work on-site has the necessary documents and training. The complexity of this system is why so many companies are using contractor safety management software to achieve this objective.
New Feature: Traffic Light System In Our Contractor Safety Management Software
GoContractor contractor safety management software has provided the Traffic Light feature for a while, making it easier to manage temporary workers. The system uses a simple red/amber/green color scheme to represent the status of worker documents, as well as managing worker behavior. For example, if a US contractor does not have a valid or up-to-date OSHA 10 they will be marked as red and will not be allowed on-site. In another example, if a worker is caught smoking on-site in violation of site rules, they may be given an ‘amber’ status. They may still be allowed on-site but their manager will be alerted that there is an issue that they need to monitor.
The power of the Traffic Light System comes from the clarity it provides management. It’s a simple visual aid that makes managing worker behavior and documents easy. The color scheme means that when you want to review the status of a worker, all you need to do is to go on the GoContractor platform and look at the color icon beside a worker’s name. You can then hover over the icon and see the reason, or click on the worker to get more information. More companies, such as Renewable Energy Systems (RES), are utilizing the Traffic Light System as an efficient way of managing workers in fast-moving projects where a lot of workers are coming and going on-site.
How it Works for Contractor Companies
The Traffic Light System uses a Red/Green color system for contractor companies. If a contractor company is green, that means there is no issue with that company. If the company’s status is Red, that means there is an issue with a mandatory document and there is a problem. A company’s status only becomes red if there is not a valid or up-to-date mandatory company document (insurance, health and safety statement).
If a company’s Traffic Light status is Red, all that company’s workers are marked as red.
- Green means go: A worker is permitted to come on site
- Red: A worker is not permitted to come on site.
All workers are set by default to green and can be changed either manually or by automated changes linked to mandatory documents, or by the mandatory documents of a contractor company.
How to use the Traffic Light System for Contractor Companies
To check a worker’s light status, you go to Users. You will see icons to the left of a user’s name, green, amber/yellow and red icon. An important thing to know is that Icons have specific designs to ensure that the feature will work for those who are colorblind.
Go to Companies to see the color status of contractor companies. It will either be Red or Green as Amber is only used for users. Hover over the color status to the reason why a company is set to Red. To reiterate, if a contractor company has a Red color status, all of their workers will be set to red and will not be allowed to access the worksite.
Conclusion
The difficulty for safety managers working on large projects come from the complexity of managing hundreds, if not thousands of temporary staff who are spread across various sites. It’s a headache to ensure that every worker is trained and has all the requisite documents and qualifications. This also holds true for contractor companies, with management responsible for ensuring these companies and their workers are compliant. The job is a lot easier when you use contractor safety management software such as GoContractor which makes handling all these issues easier.
