As long as you make it clear in the contract thje answer is YES

Bob

You want your suppliers to reduce their margins in order to subsidise your statutory duty???

Paul,

Don't even think of going there!

My initial reaction would be that this is unethical, most contractors may treat this arrangement as a joke and your safety arrangements with contempt, this could be a barrier to getting the right quantity of specialist labour at critical times within the project programme and even a days delay to your construction programme would cost far more than your organisation would ever gain by levying this induction charge in the first place.

You also run the risk of operatives avoiding induction sessions, signing in under other operatives names and would this arrangement even stand up to a civil challenge?

Not another load of rubbish.

As plant hirers (Tower Crane suppliers) our crews are asked to sit through inductions sometimes taking up to 2 hours.

This some weeks entails going onto different sites which are UKCG ran now someone wants to charge for the privelige?

As stated these are CPCS & CSCS qualified people.

Site Specific inductions are what you should be aiming for not the ridiculous time after time videos that have a negative effect on the workforce rather than the positive one they should have.


Regards Alex

When properly done these sorts of charges can act as a good driver to ensure continuity of personnel on site. Too many contractors swap staff on site as regularly as they change underwear!! Yes there are problems to be addressed but these can generally be resolved by permitting an agreed number to be inducted FOC dependent on the nature of the work and time on site.

Bob

Chris

I am afraid the HSE would find some disagreement with your abbreviated list

Bob

It is the responsability of the PC to make adequate allowance within their tender submissions. This means that they are obliged to fully price into their submission, adequate percentage to fully undertake their duties as Principal Contractor as stated in CDM Regs. I would suggest that you ask the MD if reasonable allowance has been made within the prelims or if it has been missed from the tender. If tenders have been obtained for these sites from Sc's and Contractors and no such documentation was provided to them or at least identifiable in contracts I would question the legality. Inductions should not take too long or a lot of irrelivent information is being given out that is going in one ear and straight out of the other. I would suggest that your company are probably getting the better deal at the moment as if you try to charge the SC/Contractor will return the charge plus profits & OH. This could potentially make your company more expensive in future tenders in which your company will have to add in at tender stage. Is there a large turnover of staff? Why? 65% of everysite(50) every day sounds massively excessive. What sort of sites? (housing, commercial) It maybe the management of the inductions. The stats. 65% of 50 sites daily is deeply concerning.
Incurred costs include for say 100 people per site
3250 people for say 2 hour induction and 240 days of the year @ 48 weeks per year and £30 per hour. I make that £46,800,000.
I know my figures are a complete guestimate but you can correct them to a true figure if you wish. But at those above I would suggest you reduce your inductions to 30 mins which in most cases should be more than ample that would equate to £11,700,000 a reduction of 75%. I would say that is some sort of saving. On top of that you would have increased working time meaning the company would be making more out of their prelims. I would also say that 65% of 50 sites daily could be massively reduced. I think your aim should be to reduce costs by making improvements to the management of the inductions from the brief stats you have given. It looks like you could save your company at least 50% -75% of its current induction costs.
Charging the SC/Contractor I would avoid that route looks like youve got more money to make from savings.

Chris

See para 173 of the acop. The list is rather long.

Brett

There is nothing to prevent a PCs tender costings for induction to take acount of payments by the subcontractor under the contract terms. Prohibitions only apply to PPE in this context and only apply to individual employees and not to organisations.

Bob

Bob, thanks for pointing that out to me. It all depends on what you mean by HSE? I had a meeting last year with two HSE Inspectors and showed them my standard induction training, both agreed it was acceptable.

My list above is pointers for the actual training which has to be site specific - I don't have any worries at all about my approach. The para you point out does agree with my sentiment that it does not have to include general safety training so would not take "all day".

Brett

The problem is the gap between the principles and the practice. Many large contracts have specific induction requirements and it is not possible with say a 5 year project period to define clearly all costs. We need to be clear between legal duties and clearly defined tender terms via a contract between two organisations. There can be no question of an unfair contract as these are two legal entities and are free to enter contracts with agreed terms. The illegality would occurr only if the subcontractor passed on the costs to his employees. This is his own breach of HASWEA etc though not the PCs.

I agree that it is very difficult with smaller contracts but it is still a good driver to get subbies to m,aintain the continuity of labout rather than the eternal face swapping game.

Bob

Also, if you did that to me I would invoice your company for the operatives non-productive time spent attending your training.

Bob,

I can appreciate where you are coming from in defence of the PC being able to charge here. What I am not able to except is that the PC can move the goal posts after issuing the SC/Contractor the work/Contract. It again goes back to a management issue at the point of tender between the PC and SC/Contractor. It is not in the interest (namely financially) of the anyone to keep changing staff on any size project. If like so many have said they would price into their tender or countercharge for training. We are currently in a market where large PC's have reduced their prelims to a ludicrously low percentage, and then try to recoup. I personally do not see it as cost effective to make these charges for any party. Again any form of training should be included within the preliminaries. From what I can gather you are predominantly refering to the Principle Contractor/Client Contract (appoligise if I am wrong), and not the contract that is entered between PC/SC/Contractor. As steve-IOM very few Sc's/Contractors charge for RA's and Method Statements. This opens up a whole barrel of charges that the sub contractors could pass over to the PC again in the long run to the client. Yes the PC could pass on the costs but expect to be countercharged and possibly charged for other administration charges, or an increase in hourly rates to cover the additional costs.
For me as I said above induction format/management could be the main issue here according to the stats., and if it's not it probably goes back to the original tender/s submission. The PC should also look at why Sc's/Contractors are changing their staff so frequently by entering into dialogue with their suppliers, or is the PC trying to renegotiate contracts part way through.

Boblewis

I think there is a section of HASAWA somewhere that applies to "employers and other persons", I would be interested in the section that exempts "relationships under contract" or any criminal case law that you know of.

regards

Just a few weeks ago i had to sit through 3 separate site inductions with the same principle contractor (2 in Liverpool & 1 in hull) i explained after the first one that i had already been inducted on one of their sites only to be informed that i had to do the full induction again.

I had to sit through the same induction almost word for word on all 3 sites with the same videos!

When i worked on the petro chemical sites some years ago we were given an initial half day induction by the company and we were given an induction card (white card) which the person (usually the plant engineer) doing the induction signed and dated and i you also had to sign and date.
when you moved to another site as long as you presented your induction card all you had to do was sit through the site specific induction which took no longer than 20 minutes.

this worked really well with no issues as long as you had your white card, if you didnt have your white card then you had to do the full induction again.

perhaps the UKCG need to look at such a system to streamline what has become an absolute over the top exercise.

as for charging for the induction that just seems like another example of subby bashing by the principle contractors who are already screwing their subbys to the floor.

AL W

The section 9 duty is towards employees. ou cannot stretch it to employer/employer brelationships.

Bob

Bob, I think you have been in the drink ;-)

I have to agree with the vast majority of the posts on this topic and say that the proposal to charge for inductions is going to have potentially serious consequences with regard to your duties under common law as one poster has said, increased costs as another and from the HSE as well.

Take the advice from here and don't even attempt to implement the proposal.

Regards,

Ciaran

Many thanks for the replies, I agree that to charge or levy for inductions would be wrong and feel the way forward would be to manage the induction process better. We currently have a standard induction with the ability to add specific info throughout and takes no more than 30 minutes including filling in the required form etc.

Again many thanks and it only confirmed what I feel is the way forward, now just have to convince management, oh well best foot forward

PaulR