I have been charged by the Swedish Work Environment Authority to conduct a literature review of procurement/contracting/outsourcin practices in relation to occupational health and safety (management). In addition to peer review material, the review will also cover student essays and grey literature of various kinds.
The purpose is defined according to what is possible to do within current frameworks: What are the experiences of different ways to apply legislation and voluntary guidelines for creating a good working environment and good conditions for an efficient work environment for procured activities?
We will focus on four different sectors: public procurement of construction, public procurement of transport, private procurement of construction and private procurement of cleaning services.
Hello, Johan,
You might possibly something of use in the following two chapters on accident prevention in the Encyclopedia published by the International Labour Organisation:
Wilde, G.J.S. Accident models: Risk homeostasis. Chapter 56.10 in Jeanne. M. Stellman (Editor-inChief), ILO Encyclopeadia of Occupational Health and Safety (4th edition). Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Office, 1998.
22. Wilde, G.J.S. Incentive Programmes. Chapter 60.16 in Jeanne. M. Stellman (Editor-in-Chief), ILO Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety (4th edition). Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Office, 1998.
Best wishes for success in your work, Gerald Wilde ([email protected]; web: ).
Hello Johan,
I just came across you question and have had some experience with OHS in the private and public construction industry if you are still looking for responses.
From a governmental standpoint, most states in the US have a requirement of all contractors to provide workers compensation insurance for their employees to pay for medical expenses in the event that an employee gets injured on the job. A contractor is required to pay different percentages of his payroll to a state insurance fund or a private fund depending upon the risks associated with different trades. For example, the risk for a carpenter hurting himself may be established at 30% where that of a secretary might be rated at 10%. If the carpenter is paid $10 per hour of work, the employer has to pay $3 to the fund as an insurance premium.
However, if an employer is proactive in managing the safety of his employees, and goes a year without any accidents, then the fund allow him to reduce the premiums he pays based upon demonstrated risk reduction. This risk reduction is termed "experience modification factor" and is intended to create economic rewards for contractors that keep their employees safe and drive unsafe ones out of business by not being able to compete with safer companies. This is accomplished when the contractor bids on a project, he calculates the amount of labor to accomplish the task then multiplies those hours by the cost per hour he will pay his people. If the contractor is doing carpentry his bid will include the $10/hr he will have to pay his carpenter plus the $3/hr he will have to pay the worker compensation fund for every hour that carpenter works if his experience modification factor (EMF) is 1. If his EMF is .5, he will only have to pay the fund $1.5/hr for that carpenter. So instead of having to put $13/hr in his bid, he only has to put $11.5/hr with the result that his price will be lower than a competing contractor that has an EMF of 1.5 because of several accident claims over the past year that the workers compensation fund had to pay on behalf of the more careless contractor.
On commercial projects the same constraints apply plus some additional ones. Because commercial companies are exposed to increased risks of being sued if an employee of a contractor is injured while working on their project, they include language in their contracts requiring contractors to hold the commercial company harmless in the event that one of the contractor's employees is injured on their construction project. The same is true of public building projects. Some companies go even further, however, and require that a potential contractor provide his EMF and other safety statistics so the company can determine if the potential contractor is bringing additional exposure to their site if he works on the project. I have seen many companies disqualify a contractor from even bidding on a project based upon their poor safety performance.
Best of luck
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