Recently a former client was cited for hiring a contractor who was not qualified for the work they were hired to perform. Also, do not lose sight of the fact that this contractor was NOT cited for any OSHA violation as they did not violate their responsibilities under 1910.119(h)(3), although some may argue they violated (h)(3)(v) in principle. What we found out was that the contractor had lied both in person and in their “online” contractor evaluation application. The facility had delegated the contractor safety evaluation (.119(h)(2)(i) to an online evaluation process.
It took me all of 3 minutes to locate this contractor’s OSHA history using OSHA’s database, where we found five OSHA inspections – all of which resulted in citations and one was a fatal accident. None of this information was offered in their online evaluation and the fatality was not reported. A deeper look, we found that the company used a different address in their online evaluation – reasons unknown, but suspected! The names of the company leaders, the zip code, and the address on their insurance certificate all matched.
But now there is a facility with hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not over $1MM) in damages and lost production – all of which could have been avoided spending 3 minutes using a FREE database to validate the performance of this questionable contractor!
Should the online business catch these lies? Their response to the business was “that is not what our system is designed to do“.
Using these online contractor evaluation systems BLINDLY and placing 100% of your faith in them comes at some risks – the level of risks will vary, but I just want businesses to understand that these on-line evaluation businesses have flaws – not to say that doing them on-site with safety pro’s does not have its own flaws. Just BALANCE the methods used!