Contractor Safety Software: Evaluation Guide

1. Define shared responsibilities

HSE's contractor guidance covers selecting contractors, assessing risks, exchanging information, training, cooperation and managing the work. Translate those responsibilities into owners and review points in your evaluation. Decide which tasks belong to procurement, the contractor, site management and supervisors; a portal does not establish that those responsibilities have been fulfilled.

HSE: Using contractors — a brief guide. Guidance from Great Britain on managing contractor work; not a software specification or a universal legal checklist. Checked 20 September 2026.

2. Separate company and worker checks

A company approval, an uploaded certificate, a completed induction and an individual's permission to perform specific work are different records. Ask the vendor to show how they are related, who verifies each requirement and how identity mismatches are resolved. Clarify whether a document check is manual, rule-based or performed through a named external service.

3. Test changes and delayed interfaces

Use sample records to test expiry, revocation, a site change and an unavailable receiving system. Ask how the current status reaches the relevant reviewer, access system or permit process, and how failures are handled. A check-in record or location signal cannot establish that a person is authorised for every task or area. Confirm the limits of any physical access integration.

4. Limit data and keep decisions reviewable

Define what information each party needs to see, the purpose of collecting it and the agreed retention process with your data owners. Use synthetic records to test permissions. Where performance summaries support decisions, inspect the underlying evidence, missing information and differences in work exposure. Keep a named human review and correction process before taking action on disputed or incomplete records.

5. Price participation and administration

Ask who pays for company accounts, individual users, verification services, inductions, interfaces and support. Include the effort required to review submissions and resolve exceptions. Test retrieval of the supporting documents and decision history, and specify the export and retention arrangements in the proposal. Avoid treating an uploaded document or timestamp as proof that its contents were verified.

6. Work out which role each party holds on a shared site

OSHA's multi-employer citation policy, issued in December 1999, describes four roles an employer can hold at a worksite with several employers: creating, exposing, correcting and controlling. One contractor can hold more than one of them. Ask the vendor how the product records which party is responsible for an observation or inspection finding on a shared site, and whether a finding about a hazard created by another company can be assigned to that company's account and followed to closure. This is a question about record design, not a legal assessment; whether a role applies is a legal question for your adviser.

OSHA: multi-employer citation policy (CPL 02-00-124). A 1999 US enforcement directive. It concerns citations, not software, and other countries use different concepts. Checked 3 October 2026.

7. Map construction duty holders to product roles

HSE's hub for the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 names commercial clients, domestic clients, designers, principal designers, principal contractors, contractors and construction workers as duty holders. For a construction project in Great Britain, ask whether the product's roles map onto these, and where information passes from a principal contractor to the contractors under it. A single generic contractor role may be enough for a facility that only hires maintenance firms, and too coarse for a project with designers and a principal contractor.

HSE: Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015. A navigation page to HSE's CDM guidance; the duties themselves sit on the pages it links to, which we did not review here. Checked 3 October 2026.

8. Set the retention of worker documents at contract end

A contractor portal can collect licence numbers, training certificates and declarations about a worker. The UK Information Commissioner's Office describes personal data that is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary, and says to review periodically what is held and delete what is not needed. Ask the vendor what happens to a worker's documents when the contract ends or the worker leaves the company: who can delete them, whether deletion is automatic, and whether the decision history survives without the documents. Record the retention choice with your data owners before the first contractor is invited.

ICO: data minimisation. UK data protection guidance; other jurisdictions differ and this is not legal advice. Checked 3 October 2026.

9. Do not read a green status as a decision

A status of approved or compliant on a contractor record is a summary of several checks, and the summary can be out of date the moment one of them changes. Ask the vendor to show what a green status is made of: which documents, which dates, and which person or rule set it. Then ask what a site supervisor sees when one component expires while the contractor is already on site. The answer should name an action and an owner, not just a colour change.