Hi all, I work as a safety advisor for a construction company (principal contractor) carrying out a range of more traditional construction projects. As a principal contractor we have all of our systems pretty much sorted. However, i have just been informed that we may looking at diversifying into the maintenance call-out sector. The work will involve general maintenance call-out work (faulty light, leaky tap etc) to a number of central London offices belonging to one of our existing clients. All the actual work will be subbed out to a specialist maintenance company with us simply acting as a "middle man". We won't ever have any of our staff/management present and the guys doing the work will not be our employees. My confusion at the moment is surrounding responsibility and liability. What if on of their electricians electrocutes himself? What if they send somebody who is not asbestos awareness trained who subsequently causes a major asbestos incident? Could we, as the "middle man", be held accountable for these sorts of situations. We will of course thoroughly evaluate the firm before we bring them on and let them know what we expect but, ultimately, accidents can and do happen and I just want to understand where we stand if they do. Many thanks Stern

Here is a (maybe) cynical spin on what's happening: The client has realised they have duties to the tradesmen working on their sites and has decided to outsource the management to your company. They hope, when the electrician gets electrocuted that HSE go after you rather than them. Your company, having no experience in this type of management, is ideal prey for the client's lawyers when it comes to drawing up the contract.

Facilities Management Contractors undertake similar activities, but they have a management/operational structures in place to undertake the "monitoring arrangements" after selecting and appointing "competent contractors" . If you do not have the selection, management & monitoring arrangements --(the monitoring arrangements can be independently outsourced) and need to implement all of it, there will be a cost element that needs to be taken into consideration as an overhead. I very much doubt that if the tradeperson is an employee of the sub-contractor and you have undertaken reasonable checks regarding the sub-contractors selection and have specified through a contract your requirements regarding competency & management personnel undertaking the work, then you will be liable for the competency of a tradesperson.

Hey all, Thanks for the replies. Just to clarify a few points: - The firm we are using are a specialist FM (facilities management) contractor rather than a general building firm. - Our involvement is purely as a middle man as we already have the relationship with the client. The client finds an issue (faulty light etc), calls us and we pass it on (after taking a small cut of course!) to the FM contractor. - RayRapp: Whilst i understand the responsibilities of a PC under CDM as far as supervision goes, this is a different situation as we are not acting as PC. We are talking one guy turning up to an office, fixing a light/tap etc and then leaving. If we were to thoroughly vet the contractor in the first instance (as part of our normal PQQ procedures) and then periodically monitor them (audits etc) to ensure that they are working safely and to their own systems, would we be doing enough to help protect our company or is it more complicated than that? Stern