A recent fatality at an ammonia refrigeration process in Canada points to a potential weakness in “contractor safety” at facilities with active process safety management systems in place. PSM/RMP facilities regularly get “safety information and data” from their contractors; this information is usually the contractor’s OSHA injury/illness rates, experience modification rate, etc. But many PSM/RMP facilities have also begun (and rightfully so) to ask for copies of key safety programs and training records for these programs from their contractors. But what happens when your contractor uses a “contractor” (e.g. subcontractor) to help and those subcontractors have never been through training on the programs the PSM/RMP facility has on file. The response from the main contractor in Canada was very interesting, to say the least…
The Ontario Ministry of Labour reported that the fatality was a contractor working for an oil analysis company. That oil analysis company came out the very next day and stated that the deceased was not an employee of their company but was instead a “contractor” who collected oil samples and did lubrication work for them. The oil analysis company went on to say in their release how well they knew the deceased and how long they had known him, but yet he was in fact “not an employee of XXXXX”. As if this meant something! To me, it was a shameful deflection meant to merely keep their company name out of the press regarding this accident. From a compliance/safety perspective, does it matter in the investigation that the deceased was not an actual “employee” of the company he was working for?
Keep in mind that the host company where the fatality occurred, reported the fatality as a “contractor” death and told the Ministry of Labour who their “contractor” worked for. Only to learn the next day that the deceased did not actually work for that contractor, but was a sub-contractor to them.
Had this accident occurred in the USA, we would be asking:
- Did the PSM/RMP facility (the owner of the refrigeration process) have any idea that the deceased was a sub-contractor working for the contractor on record?
- Was the deceased worker a participant in the safety program that was submitted to the facility for approval?
- What training did the deceased receive from the host contractor on the safety programs that were submitted and approved?
Regardless of location and regulatory requirements, every worker should be afforded the same level of safety. This means they are trained to the same level. The fact that the company that owned/operated the ammonia refrigeration process err’ed in their reporting to the Ministry of Labour and the main contractor came out the very next day with a press release to clarify the deceased was not an employee of their company tells me this worker may have been caught up in the old “contractor game” and that is just a damn shame.
We can only hope that the Ministry of Labour will look into this worker’s training as they have already indicated to the company (as stated by the company) that it appears the fatal accident may have been caused by “human error”. Was it “human error” or “poor/lack of training” that led to this fatal accident. Seeing how the host company was not aware of who this man actually worked for, I would be asking a lot of questions about this deceased workers training on safety work practices. Did the main contractor submit safety programs/procedures for approval to work on the process and then turn around a hire contract labor that was NOT even trained on these programs? Only the investigation will tell us, but I hope the Ministry will investigate this avenue.
But the big question remains… do you know who is working on your site? These days it is common to find workers in company uniforms and hard hats that are NOT actual employees of that company. This is done for a number of reasons and rarely is it done in an attempt to bypass safety matters, but in essence it often time results in this. You see most contractors do NOT have a “contractor safety program” like a PSM/RMP facility does; so these sub-contractors are often times NOT trained on the programs/procedures the PSM/RMP facility receives from the main contractor. You may even find out, albeit too late, the hard way that these subs are not even insured under their host contractor and they themselves are vastly under-insured.
But the safety aspect is the most worrisome. You see our safety orientations are NOT intended to train these workers in basic safety matters such as energy control, PPE requirements and limitations, hazcom labeling, etc. – that is their employer’s job! Our orientation is intended to “orient” them in how we execute our safety program and the basic rules that they would not be familiar with under their employer’s safety programs/policies. Having a worker who works for a different company, one that we have not evaluated, but is represented to be an employee of a company we have evaluated can poke some serious holes in a contractor safety program. In fact, sometimes facilities will find small sub-contractor companies who are so small they believe OSHA does not apply to them so they have no safety program or safety training, but there they stand before us in XYZ contractor coveralls and a hard hat – impossible to distinguish them from the contractor that was actually evaluated!
As I said, we will have to wait for the Ministry of Labour to complete their investigation before we know the full story of what happened and how it happened; but the behind the scenes reporting certainly paints a picture that the host facility was NOT aware that their contractor was using a “sub-contractor” to perform work on their ammonia refrigeration process.