Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Joe and Jen Allen of Allen Safety LLC take their combined 40+ years of worker safety, OSHA, EPA, production, sanitation, and engineering experience in Manufacturing Plants including Harvest Plants/Packers, Case Readies and Further Processing Plants, Food Production Plants, Feed Mills, Grain Elevators, Bakeries, Farms, Feed Lots, and Petro-Chemical and bring you their top methods for identifying risk, preventing injuries, conquering the workload, auditing, managing emergencies and catastrophic events, and working through OSHA citations. They're breaking down real safety opportunities, safety citations, and emergency situations from real locations, and discussing realistic solutions that can actually be implement based on their personal experiences spending 40+ weeks in the field every year since 2001. Joe and Jen are using all of that experience to provide a fresh outlook on worker safety by providing honest, (no sponsors here!) and straight forward, easy to understand safety coaching with actionable guidance to move your safety program forward in a way that provides tangible results.
Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Who's Liable? Navigating Multi-Employer Work Sites: Host Employer vs Contractors #61
Episode Summary: Contractor Liability and Job Site Safety
In this episode, Joe and Jen dive into the complexities of contractor liability and job site safety, focusing on the responsibilities and legal implications for both contractors and host employers. The discussion highlights the often misunderstood aspects of liability beyond just having insurance, emphasizing the importance of clear roles and responsibilities when things go wrong on a job site.
Key Points:
- Understanding Contractor Liability Beyond Insurance:
- The episode starts by clarifying that liability isn't just about having insurance but understanding who is responsible when things go wrong on the job site.
- The importance of assigning liability for day-to-day operations is emphasized, particularly when using shared equipment or facilities.
- Specific Examples of Liability Scenarios:
- Equipment and Safety Gear: Joe and Jen discuss scenarios like using another contractor’s equipment or safety gear, stressing that liability often stays with the owner of the equipment.
- Confined Spaces and Rescue Operations: They debate who should handle confined space permits and rescue operations, with considerations given to cost, competence, and legal implications.
- Challenges with Contractor Management Programs:
- Contractor management programs often rely on data entry rather than safety experts, leading to potential gaps in safety practices and increased liability for host employers.
- These programs can give a false sense of security, as the actual safety measures may not align with what's documented.
- Importance of Clear Communication and Planning:
- The hosts stress the need for thorough planning before the project begins, including who provides what equipment, safety training, and permits.
- They advocate for risk assessments and clear agreements to ensure everyone understands their responsibilities.
- Practical Tips for Managing Liability:
- Lockout/Tagout and Confined Space Procedures: They highlight the importance of having documented and validated procedures to minimize liability.
- Project Phase Assessments: Breaking down projects into phases and conducting risk assessments for each phase can help manage and reduce liability.
- Host Employer's Continuous Responsibility:
- Even when a contractor is hired, the host employer cannot completely remove their liability. They must ensure the contractor is competent and that safety measures are followed.
- Real-World Examples and Personal Experiences:
- Joe and Jen share stories from their own experiences, illustrating how misunderstandings about liability have led to project delays and increased costs.
SEO Keywords:
- Contractor Liability
- Job Site Safety
- Confined Space Safety
- Equipment Liability
- Contractor Management Programs
- Risk Assessment
- Lockout/Tagout Procedures
- Host Employer Responsibilities
- Safety Training
- Project Safety Management
This episode offers a comprehensive look at contractor liability, providing listeners with practical advice on how to manage and reduce risks on job sites. Whether you're a contractor or a host employer, understanding these key points can help ensure that your projects run smoothly and safely
The contractor. Liability top Job site safety issues. Okay, got it. Not liability like insurance, because no one knows how to get insurance. You call somebody to get insurance. What we're talking about is who's liable for what during the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if it goes bad, Whose problem is it really?
Speaker 1:That's what we're talking about today.
Speaker 2:Okay, got it All right, here we go.
Speaker 1:Welcome everybody.
Speaker 2:Joe Jen contract liability, a lot of projects, that's the thing that no one understands very well is the liability side. Use the liability side, but basically it's everyone says we got insurance, we're fine. It's financial responsibility when things go left right. That's what we're really talking about.
Speaker 1:So give me an example. We're going to be doing a project. We need a meter. Okay, I want to use your meter because I don't want to be liable.
Speaker 2:I beg your pardon. I said I beg your pardon.
Speaker 1:I want to use your meter and your Cal gas, so if it goes bad, it's your problem, not mine.
Speaker 2:Yes, I guess. So if it goes bad, it's your problem, not mine. Yes, no, thank you Okay.
Speaker 1:Why don't you let me use your harness then?
Speaker 2:No, the same reason why we cut them up instead of sending them home to use with their stands.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about hot water? Can I use all your fire watches?
Speaker 2:I would prefer you not, although, honestly, if it's my building, I kind of might want to do that.
Speaker 1:okay, I would maybe rather do that okay, we're gonna give solutions in a few yes, anyway. So, uh, what about confined space permit? Am I supplying all the confined space stuff? Are you doing it? Are you the contractor?
Speaker 2:I'm the contractor. I don't want to supply it yeah, I think you're incompetent, so I'm gonna make you use my permit.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about rescue?
Speaker 2:You supplying?
Speaker 1:the rescue or me Depends on the bill. It may be cheaper for me to do it than healthier people know what's going on.
Speaker 2:I get a rescue team set out there for 50 grand all day long, literally Not kidding.
Speaker 1:That's the real price, folks.
Speaker 2:We had somebody get a bid for that the other day.
Speaker 1:What's the?
Speaker 2:issue then yeah, the other piece is that are my people in this space, no, just me, just my people. I don't want you to know, because I can have my employees working in the same area and providing rescue, as long as they've been correctly trained right. I think I'd rather do that than add on an extra 50 grand to the bill.
Speaker 1:Personally. What about training? Can you all train some of us on some stuff we've got to do here today?
Speaker 2:No, but you're welcome to attend the training that I'm hosting with a third party that's doing the training and they can certify you, but I'm not certifying you for anything, I'd rather you train my people in PIT and elevated working hard.
Speaker 1:Why not?
Speaker 2:No, I'm paying you to be an expert. Be an expert or I'm gonna find somebody else who is an expert I'm trying.
Speaker 1:I'm trying not to be liable, so here's what I'm trying to do. I want to get.
Speaker 2:You're also probably gonna say, hey, I'm just gonna be the general and sub everything out and make somebody else do it. That's correct.
Speaker 1:So what so? What my goal is, my goal as a contractor is a hundred percent provide nothing provide nothing, get paid a lot, not be liable yeah that's my goal and provide the least amount of training that I'm paying for myself.
Speaker 2:See if I can get it from some other venue facility.
Speaker 1:So will I get an a in some of these computer systems? You bet I want to get an a because my company got me in to tell you that we're really good to go. But I didn't train a lot of people because I didn't ask that question.
Speaker 2:It just says we have a training program to say how I got it so what he's referring to is there's contractor management programs and systems that are online. They basically charge a bill to a contractor to say, hey, if you want to work with client a, you've got to be in our program and you also have to pay this bill for it too.
Speaker 1:That's correct.
Speaker 2:And now you also have to load all your safety stuff and insurance stuff into this.
Speaker 1:The theory is. The theory is if I load all that, you should be good to go.
Speaker 2:It'll give you.
Speaker 1:And I take most of the liability. It'll give you a letter. Grade A, b, c, d.
Speaker 2:The problem with that is is, first of all, those requirements can change and ebb and flow, so as the person who's the host employer asking your contractors to do this, you do have to have someone who's knowledgeable, that knows what to ask for and what should be included in those programs. The second piece of that is is that, generally speaking, from what I have found working with those companies, it's not a safety person or safety trained person the way you and I would think of like oh, you're a safety manager, you understand code. That's not who's reviewing the programs on the other side for that program or for that company that you load the stuff into and then my it's a data entry type person it's not a safety manager.
Speaker 1:My people that load it may be working in the front office. Never go to the site that happens a lot right.
Speaker 2:So what happens is is that they're not really sure because I am gen hr but I'm also working as safety and I need to get my employees onto this site. So, hey, I am now going to be the person who's creating the safety program. But I've never really been to the project sites or the field, so I'm not really sure what they do. So I pull a generic program off the internet, kind of put our name in there and kind of hope for the best. Now I'll submit that they'll probably kick it back and say you need to address these three things.
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:I will put in a paragraph that addresses that in somehow some way, but I don't really know if that's what we do or not.
Speaker 1:And that's not what I'm going to do, because I've got stuff I got to do. That day when I'm the contractor I mean it's great that she put all that stuff in there and it made our company qualified, but I got the stuff I got to do.
Speaker 2:Well, you may not even be aware of what I wrote. You may not even know what I wrote.
Speaker 1:So that's one. The host hires somebody and they think they're moving the liability, and in reality what happens is that the liability actually goes not back to the contractor, which they thought was going to happen, it goes back to the host.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think that's the overarching thing that we have to keep in mind is, anytime we're a host employer and we choose to bring a contractor onto our site, while they may have the one that they may be the one that has the event occur and there will be some repercussions financially and legally and from a regulatory standpoint to them. The host can't wash their hands of that.
Speaker 2:They are still going to be implicated and have fines as well. I mean they're still going to get citations and have some financial impact because they didn't make sure things were good. They can't remove that responsibility.
Speaker 1:All right. The next one is ladders. On the contrary, can I borrow your ladder? Yeah, I only need it real quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just real fast, yep.
Speaker 1:Can I borrow it like all day?
Speaker 2:I would prefer you not, because somehow it's going to come back to me, probably damaged. You're probably going to break it. Well, I can stint on my name on as a company. Yeah, you could, yeah, say it's mine. Yeah, because most of the time, as the host employer, we don't walk around and run around stenciling our company logo on all of our stuff.
Speaker 1:But I will.
Speaker 2:If we have all of the same things, that is a thing.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:That sometimes we end up losing stuff and we'll say it's by accident. Things just get gathered up and we don't know. But, right, wrong or indifferent, we end up losing stuff. I need a forklift.
Speaker 1:Can you get me a forklift?
Speaker 2:No, because first off, I may be renting it, so I may not be able to, based on my contract. Let somebody else that's not working for me use it, but I need one for the job.
Speaker 1:Your bill's going.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:If I don't get a forklift, there's two more days I was like what Because? Your bill's going to go up for two more days because I can't get one today.
Speaker 2:Then I'm going to have to have my people do whatever that portion of the job is, because you haven't been trained on that lift. Okay, so you have to have training on the PIT aerial lift genie boom, I need an aerial lift too. And don't even come in here with some kind of forklift basket. We're not doing that either. I need an aerial lift because I got to get up there and do that. Then you'll need to rent one.
Speaker 1:Okay, you'll need to procure one for yourself and then show me training for it. All right, so basically all these things is my job as a contractor to divert that liability.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And so on the front end, as the host employer, what you want to do is figure out what that list of materials and PPE and equipment is going to be on the front end. So they need to go in confined spaces. Are they going to bring their own tripod and davit system and winch and all of that stuff? Are they bringing their own fall harnesses? Are they bringing their own meters? Are they bringing their own hot work stuff? Whose permits are we using anytime we have to do any of this stuff? You know, if they're going to be working within a leading edge, how are they going to manage it? Because theoretically, they should have a process for that. And so let's try to work all that stuff out on the front end, because then we can get out of when they roll up and they don't have any of that and they have this meter. It's not currently calibrated, we don't have. Then we're out of that first hour craziness of the program that we talked about a couple, yeah, a couple episodes back, which, well, I'll link it up here.
Speaker 1:So you can now I will tell you I've had some great contractor crews who were flawless and trying to hard out to make sure this stuff was right. Yes, but yes. But what happens?
Speaker 2:over all the years we've been doing this, these are things that came about that shut everything down there are, and now we're trying to run around for what we can do legally yeah, and and we are all in crunch time because we only have a certain amount of time allotted that we pulled everything offline to be able to do this project. So, whether that's because we can't hold temp and weather related, or it's because the plant has to start up at a certain time, or we've got orders we have to fill, or something's coming and we've got to do whatever.
Speaker 1:But yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Part of our job. It's always a time crunch and when we have this weird go on with the contractor and we're trying to play who's liable? Who's signing the hot work permit? Who's going to be liable if we burn stuff down? Who's going to be liable on the confined space side if we have an entrant and things go bad? That's eating up that time, but it's an important conversation, so we just need to pull that conversation out of project day and move it to earlier in the week.
Speaker 1:And so, for those of you who don't know us, we do not manage projects as safety. We manage complex problems that are timeline-based, that have to be done right now and help everyone get through it from the safety side. So what he means by that is… it's a different view of dealing with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're not going to roll up and be on site during a project for 30 straight days every day. We deal with when it's the most chaotic and most catastrophic, which is typically at the beginning and maybe some stuff in the middle and then at the end. So we're not there camped out. We're only there on the critical days where we know it could go bad and we're really kind of nervous.
Speaker 1:Talked about usually happens, the first few hours of a five-day project. Yep, because we've got to figure it out, yep.
Speaker 2:So whatever that is. So that's kind of our skill set. That's where some of this is coming from. Again, this is our opinion. Take it how you want Do a thorough risk assessment of what's going on with your particular project and your particular vendors and contractors. Validate that insurance to make sure it's really what you need, because that's another one that's really important when we talk about liabilities making sure we have current insurance, the right insurance, what they can actually do and the right work comp for the right state yeah for the right state what they can actually do with that insurance.
Speaker 1:So some insurance has to be changed based on what projects they're going to take on Because our insurance premium is very high compared to some people that are maybe our competitors, but it's because we do things live. Yes, it is I mean so as a contractor, insurance requires and then vice versa. We had one years ago where the insurance was way too much. They needed because they were at a mill, but they were only pouring concrete, so they didn't need it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they didn't need stuff, for, you know, firing a torch in an explosive space, potentially yeah, so work with what they really need.
Speaker 1:so get on the front end, manage it. And then the last thing is your site inspection forms and training. We talked about that's important work with your crews the few days before, work with them that day, but make sure you're you're getting your, you know, your, basically your scope in your mind of what are we really doing and do we have you know, if, if, if, if you, you have a ladder, I have a ladder then maybe the deal is I discount my bill because you're going to let me borrow a ladder or I'm renting the equipment. You may have rented it for me and I'm doing the bill of laden for the equipment, so you may have got it because it's cheaper, but I'm actually going to pay for it, so I take the liability. There's ways you can move in and out of those systems.
Speaker 2:And I think once we figure that out, then we can start breaking the project down into phases Correct, and we can start doing risk assessments for phase one and breaking down. Okay, there's four weeks in phase one, each week, what are we looking at? And we can start backing that up. And so it's not such an well. We could never do a risk assessment for a project. This is going to be a three month long project, no problem. Then break it up into phases, break each phase up into weeks and then you start managing each day of week one, each day of week two If you do a line break or you do anything that needs a certified inspector.
Speaker 1:Boiler line breaks piping inside of a unit and that inspector goes in there. It may be the contractor's doing a part, then the inspector's part, then the location validates that it's okay for ops and then maintenance says yes, we're good to go, and then they put it online. So there may be five or six entities involved with that process and it may go back to like we had the other day. The inspector said there's a gap, contractor goes back and has to do it again. So you work on where those cutoffs and who's got to validate food safety. A lot of times we have to validate in our locations if something's good or not for a weld.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or maybe a maintenance person to say yes, good, but to work on where those cutoffs are and you go through, and I think my last big one is probably going to be lockout yes, lockout, and confined space assessments. So, when you are working through how to start mitigating and reducing your liability as a host employer or even as a contractor, if you're not confident and you're not sure and you're not really feeling a hundred percent, like if someone subpoenaed this I know this is correct.
Speaker 2:And I feel like there's no question. I know that this assessment or this lockout's right, we need to work on that. That's something that I would encourage you to really take a look at, because we want to make sure that everything we do is a process and not a person. So if Joe comes in as contractor A and says, you know what, I need a lockout procedure, I don't, as the host employer, want to verbally tell him anything. I want to hand him a sheet of paper that's been validated and reviewed and checked by the expert at my location for that piece of equipment and hand it to him, and that is the process that we do.
Speaker 1:You can choose to follow it or not, but that's how we do it and that's why we talk about financial assessment in the other episodes or in these episodes. That it's not about if you go into space. It's about if a contractor does that's right and removing the liability and removing the liability from the host, and so you know we're giving it over to the contractor.
Speaker 2:We have an evaluated space. Yep, We've identified the hazards.
Speaker 1:Because there's no way I'm going to know how to do everything for lockout or find a space or location. Yeah, so I've completed it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it yeah. He may not know which bucket in the MCC room.
Speaker 2:It's been three weeks I've been here. I don't know if you changed it. Yeah, so we want to again make sure that we've got processes and systems, We've got forms and inspections and evaluations and risk assessments, and we want to make sure that we have all of that well ahead of time and that way that allows us that if we do find we have a gap, we've got time to address it before it's project day hour one.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. We appreciate you listening today.
Speaker 2:All right. So if you've got more questions again, allensafetycoachingcom, you can reach out there If you want some support on some projects. Allen-safetycom, we do project safety stuff, like we said, but we don't hang out all during all the during the entire project days it's the critical days only.
Speaker 2:So that's that's kind of how we view that and how we work through that. Otherwise we do training. You can check out Allen dash safetycom to see the different in-person services, assessments, procedures, all that good stuff that we can provide you If you've got safety questions. Otherwise, you can catch up with us on any of the socials joe allen and jen allen on linkedin. Allen safety llc is our handle on tiktok, facebook, instagram, all the things.
Speaker 2:So if you wanted to see what we've been up to, where we're traveling and what we're doing in those different states, we post different fun videos about that too, so you can kind of see what we're doing and where we're at. I'm going to four or five different ones this week. 30 hours of driving just this week alone. So so, uh, lots to see, lots to cover, lots of ground to cover. So, all right, if you've got episodes you want to request, direct message us. We'll try and fit those in and otherwise, have a great week, everybody, take care.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to safe, efficient, profitable a worker safety podcast. If you're looking for more in-depth discussions or step-by-step solutions on all of the different safety and regulatory topics, please visit us at wwwallensafetycoachingcom for web-based virtual coaching and training, or at wwwallen-safetycom to book our team for onsite services, training sessions, to order merchandise, to learn more about our team and what services we provide in the field, or just simply to request a topic for us to cover on our next podcast. If you found today's podcast helpful and would like to support our podcast further, please help us by subscribing, liking and sharing this podcast with anyone that could benefit from the information we cover here, as that helps us to continue to put out this free content. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you.
