For many organisations, contractors now perform some of their most critical and highest-risk activities. Yet contractor safety is still too often viewed as an HSE issue rather than a leadership and governance issue. Having procedures, audits and prequalification processes does not necessarily mean an organisation manages contractors well. The more important question for leaders is: how mature is the system behind them? asks Adel Lawson”.
History provides some sobering lessons.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry identified failures across numerous organisations involved in the refurbishment, including the client organisation, designers, principal contractor, subcontractors, and consultants. Among the issues identified were unclear responsibilities, inadequate competence and failures of leadership and oversight.
The 2018 Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse provides another example. Six people lost their lives after a structure displaying significant cracking collapsed onto traffic below. Information about the cracking had passed between organisations before the collapse, yet the seriousness of the developing risk was not translated into sufficiently decisive action.
These cases are very different, but the leadership lesson is similar: major failures rarely result from one missing procedure. They emerge when weaknesses across governance, competence, communication, accountability and decision-making begin to align.
This is why contractor safety maturity matters.
In researching and writing Contractor Safety Management: From Compliance to Culture, I increasingly saw contractor management as an interconnected system. Mature organisations look beyond incident statistics and ask deeper questions about leadership, contractor selection, risk planning, competence, operational control, culture, workforce wellbeing, performance intelligence and organisational learning.
For executives, maturity therefore provides a different lens. It asks not simply whether requirements exist, but whether they are understood, owned and consistently effective where the work actually happens.
Ultimately, leaders should be asking a very different question: Are our contractors compliant – or is our organisation genuinely mature enough to manage them?
Adel Lawson MSc CFIOSH is managing partner of Demoura Lawson Consulting and a safety leadership consultant and author with over 24 years of experience, including two decades in the Middle East. His work spans contractor management, organisational culture and infrastructure projects, supporting organisations including QAFCO, QatarEnergy, Aramco, Qatar Airways and Ali Bin Ali Holding. Author of Contractor Safety Management: From Compliance to Culture, Lawson helps leaders strengthen leadership and decision making and build safer, more resilient organisations.
