Contractors and external companies — oversight that starts before anyone enters the site

A large share of serious events in industrial plants involves work carried out by external companies: overhauls, inspections, construction, machine servicing and work at height. The contractor knows their own technology but not the plant — the layout of installations, internal traffic rules, alarm signals or the places that demand extra caution.

At the same time, contractor documentation is often the least organised part of the system. A copy of a qualification in an email, an insurance policy in the project manager's folder, a medical certificate shown once on the first day — and the question of whether everything is still valid in month three goes unanswered.

The contractor module creates one register of companies and their workers, where every required document carries an expiry date and a visible status. Instead of searching mailboxes, the coordinator sees which company is fully compliant, whose documents expire in the coming days and who is missing a certificate.

Checking documents on entry is necessary but not sufficient. Work lasting weeks or months needs ongoing supervision: walkarounds, observation of working methods, verification that protective equipment is used and a response to deviations.

In VIMS remarks from such checks are recorded against the contractor rather than in a separate notebook. Repeated deviations become visible as company history, giving a solid basis for a conversation with their management and for decisions about future cooperation.

Where a remark requires fixing, a corrective action is created with an owner and a deadline. If an event involves a contractor, the event record links to the company, its documents and earlier observations.