Hi all

First time posting on here and looking for advice regarding an incident I am investigating.

At 6am this morning one of our subcontractors carried out works that they had not been instructed to do, they did this outside the construction site hours, without any supervision during the works, without RAMS and importantly without instruction.

I am going to go through our investigation procedues with the contractor involved but where I am stuck is, what questions do I ask the Site Manager as he was not there at the time?

So far I have come up with the following questions and would appreciate any advice/input in case I have missed anything:

1. Had there been any discussions that may have indicated the contractor was to carry out out the works?

2. Do you provide any verbal instructions that the contractor could start the works?

3. How was the contractor able to access site without supervision?

4. Did the contractor submit any RAMS in relation to the works they carried out?

5. Did we, as Principal Contractor, influence the contractor in anyway to carry out the works?

It beggers belief this even happened so want to get as much information from our Site Manager to see if there was anything at all that made the contractor think they could just 'crack on'!

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thanks Alan, much appreciated.

You may also want to check as well as those questions above about was it expected or any indication, were they under financial pressure to complete works by a given date, this happens a lot.

Was the task they did in the plan to be done at a later date or had nobody thought it would need to be done and so not planned at all ? Did the contractor consider it part of some other works they had been given the go ahead for.

Don’t believe that the contractor decided to come in and do some work no one wanted to be done at some point, so was it “no you can’t do that next week” as we have  x and y happening, but you must complete by next Saturday.

I think there are some questions in there somewhere.

Chris

What hours were specified to the contractor as acceptable for the site?

Were these documented and communicated including during site induction to the contractors employees?

What access arrangements were in place for the site?

Were these documented and communicated including during site induction to the contractors employees?

Do the site security measures prevent access by everyone or only those who should not be present? (e.g. gates on key fobs / cards with 24 hour access, padlock keys copied to many).

In the spirit of co-operation are regular reviews held with all present at site to assess progress to project targets, discuss potential conflicts within the works schedule and agree upcoming works activity?

Supervision is a bit of a red herring - even when your site manager is present there are lots of tasks over and above the one to one supervision of individual contractors - as Principal your communicated procedures should support them.

i would also be looking at what you expect of a "contractor". Sometimes these are specilist people who would act under theeir own rams etc, but you would want to be checking them as the person in charge of the site to look for gaps or conflicts etc with other work. At other times they are more like employees following your systems etc.  The two ways give rise to very different situations.

IMO they were Trespassing.  

Could you ask what safety precautions they provided i.e. First Aid, Emergency procedures, Fire Risk Assessment, risk assessments, Induction Training etc.

Good luck.