This document provides an overview of contractor management for ensuring workplace safety. It discusses the obligations of principal contractors and other parties to manage safety for contractors working onsite. The key points are: 1. Principal contractors have a duty of care for contractor safety and must ensure workplaces are safe as far as reasonably practicable. This requires having systems in place to identify, assess and control risks. 2. Contractors and their workers are deemed workers under health and safety law. Principal contractors must consult, coordinate and cooperate with contractors on safety. 3. For large construction projects over $250k, additional safety obligations apply to the principal contractor under regulations. 4. Contractor management should occur before, during

1. Contractor Management
Ensuring a safe workplace through consultation and management

2. Welcome to this HR Learning Course on
Contractor Management
The course has 5 sections.
Each Section has slides.
Some have resources and videos. Make sure that you use all the
resources.
There is an Assessment Workbook for you to complete. This will help you
to understand the most important information. It will also help you
engage with hypotheticals to UP your skills and knowledge.
If you see a key symbol It indicates this is important for your assessment.
If you see a book symbol it indicates there is a resource that is
downloadable accompanying these slides.
Upload your assessment when complete, and It will be assessed by one
of our HR Learning experts. You will also be awarded a certificate of
completion.

3. Contents
SECTION 1
1. Introduction
2. Obligations to manage contractors
SECTION 2
3. Scoping the job
SECTION 3
4. Tendering
5. Licenses, permits to work, qualification and workers
compensation
SECTION 4
6. Induction
7. Consultation
SECTION 5
8. High Risk Construction
9. Responding to Incidents
• Legislation quoted in this eLearning is from the
Model Work Health and Safety Act as of 2019. Some
states, especially Victoria, may have different
requirements.

4. INSTRUCTIONS FOR
LEARNERS
• Make sure to download the Assessment
Workbook after looking at the two units in this
Section.
• Have a look at the resources.
• Ask yourself- Can I remember what this material is
about? What are the main learning points? Do I
understand the material? How would I teach
someone else this material?
• If you get really stuck. Send your question to
michael@hrlearning.com.au.
• (You must be enrolled in the HR Learning Course
at hrlearning.com.au to get academic support)

5. Introduction
• This course is for people who will have
contractors and sub-contractors come onto their
site and who need to ensure that WHS legislative
obligations are met by all parties.
• If you are a manager, a supervisor, WHS staff or a
HSR this course will help you understand the
process of contractor management.
• It’s assumed that you have basic knowledge of
the Work Health and Safety Legislation of your
state.

6. Outcomes
By the end of these 9 units of training you will be able to:
 Ensure all parties are meeting their WHS obligations at your site.
 Scope a project to determine the risk profile/s
 Establish WHS criteria to be included into a tender document
 Create an evaluation checklist for tender evaluation
 Develop framework for vertical and horizontal consultation activities before, during and
after a project
 Respond to incidents that occur involving contractors in a timely way

7. References
This course draws on the following references:
• The Model Work Health and Safety Bill as at 9th December
2019
• The Model Work Health & Safety Regulations December 9th
2019
• AS ISO 31000:2018 Risk Management Guidelines
• AS 31010:2020 Risk Management-Risk Assessment
Techniques
• Contractor Management Guidance for Commonwealth
PCBU’s-Comcare
• HB327:2010 Communicating and Consulting about Risk

8. Section #2
Obligation to
manage
contractors
• When contractors come onto your site there are two
categories of risk that need to be considered.
1. They may injure your staff or a third party in the
course of their work.
2. They may injure themselves.
Either of these situations could see you or your company
in breach of the WHS legislation; liable under workers
compensation legislation, vulnerable to civil lawsuit, loss
of reputation and tied up in insurance battles.
Worse still there are some situations where your own
assets are vulnerable to fines under WHS legislation.
[Property damage should be covered by their liability
insurance. You need to check their cover]

9. Your right to bring in an expert
• Companies use contractors for their expertise in a particular
process or in a particular area.
• One would expect that their expertise also includes expertise in
the safety aspects of their specialisation.
• Nevertheless, that does not discount your obligation to ensure
the health and safety of that contractor on your work premises!

10. Duties
S7 of the Model WHS legislation states that a contractor or a sub contractor (and their
employees on your site) are deemed to be ‘workers’ under the WHS
legislation. (Victoria 21(3) [a & b])
This means that there is a duty of care obligation on the PCBU and the Officers of your
company towards the contractor, the sub-contractor and any of their employees.
That’s because the PCBU has a Primary duty of Care. (S19 WHS Act)

11. Labour hire staff
• The duty of care obligation also extends to labour-hire staff,
outworkers and visitors to your work premises. (Sect7 WHS
act)
• An employee of a labour hire company is deemed to be a
worker while at your premises even though they are
employed by the labour hire company.

12. Obligations
of the PCBU
& Officers
The Person Conducting a
Business or Undertaking (PCBU)
is usually your company. The
PCBU must ensure a safe
workplace [S19]
Officers must ensure that the
organisation has systems in place
to ensure a safe workplace.[See S
27 Due Diligence]

13. What does it
mean ?
• In plain English, your company has to ensure as
far as ‘reasonably practicable’ that the
workplace is safe.
‘Reasonably practicable’ requires your company to
weigh up all relevant matters including [Sect 18
model WHS Act]:
(a) the likelihood of a hazard occurring
(b) the degree of harm that might result
(c) what the PCBU knows or should
know about the hazard or risk and ways
of eliminating the hazard or risk
(d) the availability or suitability of ways
to eliminate or control the risk
(e) the costs involved

14. WHS duties
• So the PCBU is required to have a systematic
process to “ensure” a safe workplace.
• “ensure” is defined as:
“to secure or guarantee; to make sure
or certain; to make secure or safe, as
from harm.”1
Does your company guarantee safety?

15. Reasonably Practicable
• Where the PCBU relies on a specialist or technical
expertise, the PCBU is required to:
 verify the expert has the necessary
expertise for the work
 verify the expert has their own systems in
place for carrying out work safely
 verify the expert is carrying out that work
safely as per their own stated procedures
(and not putting others at risk)
 continue to consult co-ordinate and co-
operate with the expert
 provide appropriate instruction to the
contractor.
Q 4

17. What it looks like
• Your company should have a systematic process in place to identify, assess,
control and evaluate/monitor risk in the workplace.
• Australian Standard AS ISO 31000:2018 provides a good basis for
understanding the process required to meet PCBU obligations.
• AS31000 is a benchmark against which to measure “quality” of your
organisation’s safety system.

18. AS ISO
31000:2018
• The figure on the left, taken
from AS ISO 31000:2018
illustrates that a coherent
response to WHS
responsibilities requires
technical WHS knowledge and
skills;
• Principles (policies) based
on each individual company’s
structure and work process
and
• a coherent governance
framework that is evaluated
against benchmarks

19. Control of
Work
• Control is a necessary element in what is
reasonably practicable
• The PCBU needs to consider whether it has
general control or actual control over the
work being performed.
• The more control or influence over the
work, the greater the steps that need to be
taken by the PCBU to discharge its duty.
• Regardless of control there is an obligation
to consult, coordinate and cooperate with
the contractor throughout the life of the
contract.

20. Construction Projects over $250,000
• Once a construction project exceeds $250,000 a whole set of
obligations comes onto the PCBU commissioning the work and
the Principal Contractor. These obligations can be found in
Chapter 6 of the Models WHS Regulations. We will discuss them
in more detail in Section 8 of this course.

21. If you are an
officer
You have ‘due diligence’ obligations to ensure
that the PCBU is meeting their WHS
obligations.
Here’s a due diligence checklist [s27 Model
Act]. You must:
• Acquire and keep up to date on WHS safety matters
• Know the hazards and risks associated with your business
• Ensure that appropriate funds are provided for WHS in the
business
• Ensure WHS systems especially for hazard reporting,
incident response and risk management
• Ensure PCBU is compliant with the WHS legislation
Q 5

22. WHS
professional
Most companies are advised to
have a well-qualified WHS
professional on staff. Work Health
and Safety is a broad field requiring
a lot of specialist knowledge.
If you are a small company consider
getting a WHS consultant on-site to
advise.

23. Joint duty
of care
AWB Q.9

24. The safety pie • Consultation with PCBU contractors should involve a
formal definition of the “Safety Pie”. Each PCBU should
define their piece of safety pie and should ensure that
the whole pie is covered.
• All risks should be discussed and a systematic approach
to eliminating them should be developed.
• There is a lot to think about and consider.

25. When should contractor
management occur
Contractor management should occur:
1. Before the contract is tendered and has
commenced
2. During the contract period
3. At the end of the contract

26. End Section 1
Assessment task 1 to follow