How to manage contractor compliance on New Zealand worksites

Contractors arrive with their own employer and their own habits, and some have never seen your site before. You need a system to check they are compliant before they start work and that they stay compliant while they are on site.

This guide sets out six steps for New Zealand worksites, beginning with pre-registration and ending with re-induction rules.

Your legal duty to contractors

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, your duty of care covers contractors on your site. If a contractor is injured because they were not inducted, or because nobody told them about a hazard, you can be held liable even though they are not your employee.

In an incident investigation, WorkSafe New Zealand inspectors ask early on for induction records and evidence of compliance checks. A business that cannot produce them faces more scrutiny.

1. Pre-register contractors before they arrive

Pre-registration happens before a contractor sets foot on your site. You collect their company details, certifications and emergency contacts, and check them before work begins.

At a minimum, record:

• Full name and contact details
• Employing company
• Type of work being performed
• Required licences or certifications (trade licences, Site Safe card, etc.)
• Emergency contact

You can also send induction material at this stage for contractors to read before their first day.

Pre-qualification on the WorkSafe WKS-14 form

For higher-risk work, run a pre-qualification check at pre-registration. SiteKey sends the contractor the WorkSafe WKS-14 health and safety pre-qualification form, stores their answers against the company record, and leaves the company off the approved list until the form is complete.

The form asks about the company’s own health and safety system, its incident history, and the training and supervision it provides. If you send it before the first job, you can talk through any gap in the office while there is still time to fix it.

2. Require induction completion before site access

A site induction sets out the hazards and emergency procedures for one site. It covers that site’s layout, emergency exits, risks and rules.

A paper induction system has no check at the gate. Someone who skipped the induction can start work, and nobody knows until something goes wrong.

The induction is also where people first see the hazards on your site. In SiteKey your company nominates the hazards and risks, and they are shown in the site induction and again at sign in.

3. Verify certifications and licences

Depending on your industry, contractors may need current certifications. Examples are a Site Safe card on construction sites, a Dangerous Goods licence in logistics, or electrical registration for electrical work.

Certifications commonly checked on NZ worksites:

• Site Safe passport, required or recommended on most NZ construction sites
• Electrical Worker registration, for licensed electrical work under the Electricity Act
• Gasfitting licence, for licensed gasfitting work
• Forklift operator licence (F endorsement), required for forklift operation
• Scaffolding certificate, for scaffolding work above certain heights
• Confined Space entry training, for work in confined spaces

Site specific safety plans and job safety analyses are kept with the licences. SiteKey stores each SSSP against its site and the JSA library against the job. Workers can open both on their phone at the work face.

4. Use a compliance gate at check-in

On a busy site, the person who checks induction records at the gate gets pulled away to other jobs, and under time pressure the checks get skipped.

A compliance gate in your site access system checks each person's status automatically when they check in with their QR pass. If their induction is incomplete, or a required certification has expired, they are flagged at the point of entry.

5. Keep a live site occupancy record

At any point in the working day you should be able to say who is on site. You need that for safety planning, for managing overlapping trades, and above all for an emergency evacuation.

Every check-in and check-out goes into the record, which gives you an audit trail. A digital system can show when a given contractor was on site and what their compliance status was at the time.

6. Set re-induction rules

Sites and hazards change, and a contractor who has been away for a long time may need a refresher. Common re-induction triggers are:

• More than 12 months since last visit
• Significant changes to site layout or hazard profile
• Contractor working in a new area of the site not covered by their original induction
• Following a near-miss or incident

In a digital system you can set an expiry period on induction records. Once it passes, the induction lapses and the contractor has to renew it before they can check in again.