What is contractor management?
Contractor management is controlling who works on a building — their competence, their insurance, their method, and what they are permitted to do while they are there.
Most work in a managed building is done by people the FM provider does not employ, which makes this the control that actually determines what happens on site.
Competence and insurance are checked at appointment; permits and method control what happens on each visit. Doing the first without the second leaves an approved contractor working unsupervised.
Induction matters for the same reason it does on a construction site: a contractor who does not know where the asbestos register is, or which wall is a compartment wall, will find out by disturbing it.
In practice
An approved contractor list that has not been reviewed in four years.
Insurance has lapsed on two, a registration has expired on one, and the competent individual at a fourth has left the business.
Approval decays silently, and a list is a record of who was acceptable at some point in the past unless somebody revisits it.
The review date is the control, and it is the one nobody owns.
What goes wrong in practice
- Approval done once at appointment with insurance expiry never rechecked.
- Permits issued to in-house staff but not to contractors.
- Contractors working without induction on the building's specific risks.