A company hosting external workers has to tell them about the risks on its site and make sure they have understood them, before work starts. Their employer stays responsible for their trade training; you, as the site operator, stay responsible for everything that belongs to your site and to overlapping activity. In practice that means a joint site inspection first, then a written prevention plan whenever the size or the nature of the job calls for one under your local rules. The setup that works delivers that induction before arrival: it keeps a supervisor free at the gate, and it lets you refuse entry to anyone who has not completed it.
Contractor, supplier, external company: who are we talking about
Any company whose employees work on a site it does not run counts as an external company, whatever the contract calls it: supplier, contractor or service provider. That is what triggers the site safety obligations, not the name on the paperwork.
- An external company is any company, of any size, whose own staff work inside a host company's premises or on a site it controls.
- A supplier is contracted directly by the site operator for a defined job, maintenance, cleaning, security or logistics, with its own equipment and its own supervision.
- A subcontractor works for another contractor, under a contract that contractor signed with the site operator. The contractual chain gets longer, the duty of care does not: subcontractors count as external companies to you as well.
This is not a vocabulary exercise. It decides who has to send you what before the job starts, and how far your right to check extends.
Splitting the responsibilities
Trade training and professional certifications stay with the contractor's employer; everything that touches the site you run comes back to you.
| What has to happen | Who handles it | Record to keep |
|---|---|---|
| Trade training and professional certifications | The contractor | Certificates, trade cards, proof of qualification |
| Information on site-specific risks | The site operator | Signed safety induction record |
| Analysis of overlapping activity risks | Both, jointly | Prevention plan or permit to work |
| Personal protective equipment | Contractor supplies, site operator checks use | Inspection log |
| On-site safety induction | The site operator | Dated and signed induction record |
| Monitoring that the rules are followed | Both, at different levels | Inspection reports |
| Archiving the evidence | The site operator, at minimum | Contractor log |
Overlapping activity is the risk created by several jobs running at the same time on the same site, rather than by any one of them alone. A plumber working at height while a forklift moves underneath is harmless taken separately; together they create a risk neither of them fully controls. You are the only party who sees the whole site at a given moment, so you are the only one who can arbitrate. It is the same issue that shapes safety for operators on industrial sites, and it comes back identically on construction sites.
- Trade training for their employees
- Professional certifications and their validity
- Personal protective equipment
- Sending proof of training before the job starts
- Information on the risks specific to the site
- The safety induction and its record
- On-site checks and their reports
- Archiving the evidence and the contractor log
- The joint site inspection
- The analysis of overlapping activity risks
- The prevention plan, agreed by both parties
- Coordinating simultaneous jobs
Nobody carries the safety of a multi-contractor site alone. But somebody has to carry the overall view, and that is you.
The six steps, from contract to archive
Six steps mark out a contractor's passage across your site, from the first contract to the archived evidence.
- 01ContractSafety clauses and right to audit. Record: the contract
- 02Joint inspectionWalk the site together first. Record: the inspection report
- 03Prevention planAnalysis of overlapping risks. Record: the plan, written where required
- 04Safety inductionDelivered before arrival. Record: the induction certificate
- 05On-site checksVerify, do not assume. Record: the inspection report
- 06ArchivingEvidence you can find again. Record: the contractor log
Step 1: the contract
The contract between the site operator and the external company needs explicit safety clauses: training and certifications required to work on the site, an obligation to send proof before work starts, the operator's right to audit, and what happens if any of it is missing. Procurement or engineering owns this step, with support from health and safety.
Step 2: the joint site inspection
Before the job starts, a representative of the site operator and a representative of the external company walk the site or the work zone together. The point is to identify the risks specific to the site, those specific to the job, and those created by their combination. Every company working on the same operation, subcontractors included, should take part. This feeds directly into the next step.
Step 3: the prevention plan
Out of that joint analysis, both parties agree a prevention plan before work starts: hazardous phases and the measures attached to them, adaptation of equipment and installations, instructions given to workers, first aid arrangements, and how the companies coordinate. Most jurisdictions make the written form compulsory above a volume threshold or for listed high-risk work, whatever the duration. Check the thresholds that apply where your site is located before you set your internal procedure, and write the plan whenever there is any doubt. Loading and unloading operations are usually covered by their own document rather than by the prevention plan.
Step 4: the safety induction
This is where the contractor actually receives the site rules. See below for how to run it without tying up your own people.
Step 5: on-site checks
Telling is not enough: you have to verify. Protective equipment actually worn, marked zones respected, certifications still valid, permits to work followed. A check that leads to nothing, no follow-up and no consequence, is not a check.
Step 6: archiving
Every document produced in the previous steps has to be kept and findable. See the dedicated section below.
Companies that run this chain well do not do it by adding more checks at every step. They do it by removing the friction at step 4, the one that is still too often handled standing at the site entrance, between two lorries.
Training contractors before they reach the gate
The safety induction works better delivered before arrival than at the gate: that is what turns it from a formality into a verifiable condition of access.
Delivered at the gate, the induction ties up a supervisor, creates a queue when several companies turn up on the same day, and gets rushed as soon as the schedule tightens. Delivered upstream, it becomes a simple rule: no certificate, no access.
The setup that works rests on a short digital induction, sent to the contracting company before the job, completed by each worker on their own phone, validated by a knowledge check, and producing a certificate shown at the gate. Its content: major site risks, layout and restricted zones, traffic rules, what to do in an alert, mandatory equipment, who to contact on site, and the rules specific to that day's overlapping work.
- 01They are not in your IT systemsAccess with no standard account creation, sent to the contracting company
- 02Crews change from one week to the nextAn induction that redeploys as fast as the crews rotate
- 03They do not all speak the same languageContent that carries through images and gestures as much as through text
Beedeez, an LMS built for field teams, gives access to populations that do not appear in the company directory, on their own smartphone, with automatic completion tracking. In practice: a link sent to the contracting company, no standard user account to create, and a certificate generated as soon as the module and its knowledge check are done.
Across a comparable population of field workers, 61 % have no access to training designed for mobility, according to an IFOP study for Beedeez. That is exactly the obstacle facing a contractor with no fixed workstation at your site and no account in your systems. The same logic applies to dispersed internal populations: at Asturienne, part of the Saint-Gobain group, multi-site regulatory training updated in real time to local standards reaches an 89 % completion rate. The mechanism is always the same: what is acquired before arrival does not have to be replayed on arrival, which is the principle behind safety induction for agency workers.
What evidence to keep, and in what form
Five documents are enough to answer an inspection, provided they are signed, dated and reachable in a few clicks.
The prevention plan and its annexes
The reference document for the job: risks identified, measures agreed, coordination arrangements. It changes if the job changes nature along the way. Keep it available to inspectors, prevention bodies, occupational health and employee representatives for as long as the work lasts, at minimum.
The safety induction certificate
Signed by the worker, it proves they received and understood the site rules before starting. It is the document most often asked for during an inspection or after an accident.
The contractor log
It centralises who came, when, for which company and on what scope. Without it, reconstructing who was on site at a given moment is impossible.
Certification tracking and expiry dates
Certifications expire. Tracking that does not chase before the expiry date lets work go ahead under a lapsed certification without anyone noticing.
Inspection reports
They evidence that the monitoring in step 5 actually happened, with its findings, its follow-ups and any contractual consequences.
The quality test for a tracking setup fits in one sentence. Being able to answer, in under ten minutes, the question: did that person, on that day, hold the required training and certification?
Beedeez, an LMS for deskless workers, exports a timestamped log and triggers automatic reminders before a certification expires. To go further on internal certifications, see tracking certifications and their expiry dates. For reference, the average completion rate across Beedeez deployments reaches 95 %. When the completion record is itself the compliance evidence, that level counts twice over.
- 01The prevention plan and its annexesRisks, measures, coordination. Kept available for the duration of the work
- 02The safety induction certificateSigned by the worker, before work starts
- 03The contractor logWho came, when, for which company, on what scope
- 04Certification trackingValidity and expiry dates, with reminders before they lapse
- 05Inspection reportsFindings, follow-ups and what came of them
The special case of permanent on-site contractors
Cleaning, security, maintenance, catering: these crews are on site every day without being employed by the site operator. The one-off setup described above no longer covers it.
What changes: crews rotate mid-contract, often without the site operator being told in advance. The need moves from a one-off induction to continuous training, updated as site rules evolve. And the end client, where there is one, sometimes imposes its own qualification requirements on these permanent workers, on top of the operator's.
The logic then joins that of an external network that is not on your payroll, already covered in training a network you do not employ. It also overlaps with teams spread across several sites, with the extra constraint that these teams are not legally yours.
From the chain to the setup
You now have the full chain, from the first contract to the last archived record. What remains is deciding how far to tool it: a shared spreadsheet is fine for two jobs a month. An LMS becomes necessary once external companies run into the dozens, and every inspection question has to find its answer in a few clicks rather than a few days.
Want to see how a safety induction reaches a contractor before they arrive, and how the evidence comes back in ten seconds? Book a Beedeez demo.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a supplier and a subcontractor?
A supplier is contracted directly by the site operator under a services contract. A subcontractor works for another contractor, under a contract that contractor signed with the site operator. Both count as external companies as far as site safety obligations go.
Does the prevention plan always have to be in writing?
Not always. Most jurisdictions require the written form above a volume threshold, or whenever the work appears on a list of high-risk activities, whatever its duration. Outside those cases the joint risk analysis is still required, and writing it down remains the safer practice. Check the thresholds that apply where your site is located.
Who trains a contractor's employee?
Their employer stays responsible for trade training and professional certifications. The site operator is responsible for the site-specific layer: risks, zones, rules, overlapping activity. Beedeez is there to tool that second layer, not to replace the contractor's own training.
Can you turn away a worker who has not completed the induction?
Yes, and that is the whole point of delivering the induction before arrival: it turns the certificate into a condition of access rather than a last-minute formality. With a tracked setup like Beedeez, a missing certificate shows up immediately, before the worker even reaches the gate.
How do you train workers who have no account in our systems?
Through a simple access link, with no standard user account to create, sent directly to the contracting company or to each worker's smartphone. That is exactly what Beedeez, an LMS built for field teams, is designed for: populations that do not appear in the company directory.
How long should prevention plans and certificates be kept?
Retention rules vary by country and by industry, and many set no fixed archiving period at all, only a duty to keep documents available to inspectors while the work lasts. In practice, align your retention with the limitation periods that would apply after an accident and with the requirements of your own clients, rather than with the length of the job.
