Posted By S Drew Hi,Can anyone help me? We as an Organisation contract out our day to day management of Legionella. That contractor sub contracts to a third party for completion of Risk Assessments, monitoring & maintenance. I would like to know how other organisations manage contractors completing this type of work. What monitoring procedures and Audits are in place? Specific examples, KPIs etc would be really helpful. Many thanks

Posted By Ronofcam Drew, I don’t know how much you know about L8 (The control of legionella bacteria in water systems), but there are certain responsibilities you cannot abrogate to subcontractors. Firstly, a suitable and sufficient assessment is required to identify and assess the risk of exposure to legionella bacteria from work activities and water systems on the premises and any necessary precautionary measures. The assessment is carried out by or on behalf of, amongst others, “the person who is in control of premises or systems in connection with work where the risk is present from systems in the building…” This person is known in L8 as the “duty holder” (paragraph 44). In other words, the duty holder (is that someone in your organisation?) must make sure the risk assessment is carried out, either himself or on his behalf. Although the task of carrying out the risk assessment can be done by others, the onus is on the duty holder to make sure it is done. You can’t just say to the judge, “Your honour, I gave an order number for ABC Water Treatment Ltd to carry out the risk assessment, but they kept putting me off and telling me they’d do it when they had the manpower available.” Though this may mitigate, overall responsibility lies with the duty holder, and not with ABC Water Treatment Ltd. Paragraph 44 of L8 goes on to say that “the duty holder should appoint a person to take day-to-day responsibility for controlling any identified risk from legionella bacteria. The appointed ‘responsible person’ should be a manager, director, or have similar status and sufficient authority, competence and knowledge of the installation to ensure that all operational procedures are carried out in a timely and effective manner. If a duty-holder is self-employed or a member of a partnership, and is competent, they may appoint themselves. …> The responsible person should have a clear understanding of their duties and the overall health and safety management structure and policy in the organisation.” Can you answer the following questions: 1) Who is the duty holder? 2) Has a responsible person been appointed? 3) If the responsible person has been appointed, who (a) appointed him, and (b) who is he?

Posted By S Drew Thanks for this. My Organisation is the "Duty Holder" and the contractor is the "responsible person". We are an employer with several thousand staff. The Contractor co ordinates all the works relating to Legionella they then subcontract the actual assessments/monitoring/maintenance to a third party. What I really want is an idea on how to measure the performance of the contractor. what types of information should we be asking for. What questions should we be asking? what KPI's have other organisations used. Hope this helps Sharon