Contractor Management Systems: Everything you need to know

Businesses rely upon contractors for their specialised skills, often during periods of increased production and maintenance turnarounds. Engaging new contractors on unfamiliar sites and operations brings significant safety challenges, especially for contractors involved in high-risk operations.

So how can a contractor management system help with this? And which system is right for your organisation?

What is a contractor management system?

A contractor management system is a system of controls put in place to facilitate due diligence for contractor safety and risk management in the workplace. A contractor management system will support your organisation to maintain regulatory compliance, reduce operational risks and ensure contractors are both qualified and capable of completing the work safety.

How to choose the right contractor management system for your business

When choosing a contractor management system for your business, look for a system that will support your safety and risk obligations now and well into the future. If your organisation expands or makes changes to the business model, then your contractor management system needs to be able to accommodate this.

1. Ease of use
   By implementing a contractor management system, you can eliminate inefficiencies, simplify, and automate complex legal and compliance processes. Look for a system with an intuitive dashboard and easy-to-use interface, that’s simple for administrators and your contractors to navigate.

2. Streamline pre-qualification processes
   Make sure your contractor management system tailors the pre-qualification questions for specific contractor roles, work type, risk-level, or sites. This will not only make it simpler for your contractors to complete but it will also speed up the verification process for your administrators.

3. Centralised document management
   Ensure contractors can easily upload and maintain their company information. Documentation such as certificates, licences, permits, insurance, and safe work methods statements (SWMS) are easily uploaded to the system and site personnel can easily search, preview, and verify the documentation from anywhere on any device.

4. Data security and privacy
   When choosing a contractor management system consider if the system meets your data privacy and governance requirements. Also ensure that the system allows you to setup permissions to control access to documentation and sensitive information.

5. Is the system customisable?
   An effective contractor management system needs to adapt to suit your processes. Make sure the system can be tailored specifically to your needs by using custom fields and hiding features that are not relevant to your business.

6. Integration with other systems
   If you’re looking to automate your compliance processes consider if your contractor management system integrates with your existing systems.

Recommended reading: Hold contractors to account while keeping the relationship intact.

Tips for enhancing performance of your contractor management system

A contractor management system will support more efficient workflows by automating repetitive tasks and reducing gaps in compliance. However, to get the most out of your contractor management system you should ensure the following:

• Make it easy for contractors to help you by making it their responsibility to supply and manage compliance documentation.
• Use a third-part verification service.
• Enhance contractor compliance by integrating your contractor management system with your site induction software, permit to work system, visitor management system and incident reporting system.

How Rapid Contractor Management software can help

Rapid Global provides a unique offering for contractor management. Rapid’s fully integrated, modular workforce management software provides a comprehensive set of tools that offers many benefits for managing the full lifecycle of your contractors.
Rapid Contractor Management software assists with:

1. Standardised contractor pre-qualification processes
A contractor management system such as Rapid Contractor Management allows you to standardise and automate your contractor pre-qualification processes which will help you to:

• Reduce the administrative burden associated with paper-based contractor management systems.
• Shorten the procurement process and improve procurement efficiencies.
• Minimise the risks of non-compliant contractors conducting work at your sites.

2. Single source of truth to manage contractors
   A system like Rapid Contractor Management allows you to collect, verify, and automatically track expiry dates of all types of compliance documentation, including licenses, certificates, insurance documents and SWMS.
   The system does all the heavy lifting for you, automatically notifying the contracting company administrator when it is time to update their compliance documentation.

From real time dashboards, automated reporting, and the Rapid App, your team will have access to critical safety information and compliance data at their fingertips from anywhere, on any device.

3. Native integrations
   Rapid Contractor Management software seamlessly integrates with Rapid’s workforce management solutions allowing you to manage the full lifecycle of your contractors. Ensure your contractors are fully inducted, and on the job faster with Rapid Induct, issue work permits from Rapid Permit To Work and only allow compliant contractors access to your sites with Rapid Access. Create a reporting culture with Rapid Incident Reporting or streamline your safety audit processes with Rapid Auditor.

Take a crucial step towards improving safety and contractor compliance

Have you made the necessary arrangements for managing contractors? If not, we recommend getting started right away to avoid incurring unnecessary losses or repercussions down the line.

We invite you to request a demo today, so we can show you how Rapid’s Contractor Management software can help you streamline your processes and easily manage contractors.