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SUPPLY CHAINS
AND SUSTAINABILITY
Is Your EHS Team Managing Contractor and Subcontractor Risk?
ABOUT THE SUPPLY CHAIN
AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORT
Our latest Supply Chain and Sustainability Survey sponsored by
Avetta® was launched in January 2019, and by the time the
survey closed approximately one month later, 308 environmental,
health, and safety (EHS) professionals had shared their insights
into how their companies are managing the safety risks that
naturally occur in supply chains consisting of multiple contractors
and vendors.
We at Avetta and the EHS Daily Advisor Research Team would
like to extend our thanks to all of the professionals who chose to
participate in the survey, and also to our readers for their interest
in making their workplaces safer for all employees, contractors,
and subcontractors.

All percentages in the following report have been rounded to the

nearest whole percent. If you have any questions or comments
about the survey, its data, or the report, please let us know via
e-mail at media@simplifycompliance.com.

ABOUT AVETTA
Avetta connects global organizations with more than 85,000
qualified suppliers, contractors, and vendors across 100+ coun-
tries. We support the continued growth of supply chains through
trusted contractor prequalification, safety audits, monitoring, and
more. With real results in reducing TRIR, our highly configurable
solutions elevate safety and sustainability in every workplace.

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CONTENTS
About the Supply Chain and Sustainability Survey........... 2

Supply Chain and Sustainability Survey Results................ 4

Number of Contractors Employed............................................................. 4
Citations and Fines........................................................................................ 5
Skipping the Contractor Audit.................................................................... 6
Vetting Your Contractors.............................................................................. 7
How Are Contractors Audited?................................................................... 8
Contractors’ Performance Under Audit.................................................... 9
Audit Consequences................................................................................... 10

Who Responded?....................................................................11
A Message from Our Sponsor..............................................12

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NUMBER OF CONTRACTORS
EMPLOYED

For our first question, we wanted

to know just how many contractors
(including subcontractors) our
respondents work with. Their
answers ranged from a mere
handful to more than 25.

of participants work with

14% fewer than 5 contractors

20% work with 5–10

9% employ 10–15

work with between 15 and

10% 20 contractors

5% employ 20–25 contractors

of respondents employ more

38% than 25 contractors at their
organizations

5% of those polled work at an organization that doesn’t employ any contractors—

these respondents did not answer any of the subsequent questions in the survey.

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 CITATIONS AND FINES

Only 5% of survey takers work at a

company that has been cited by a
safety regulatory or other agency in
the past year because of the actions
of a contractor or subcontractor.
However, a larger share of 15% said
that their company has been cited
or fined at some point in the past
because of actions taken by a con-
tractor.

When asked how thoroughly their organizations vet new contractors or audit
current contractors regarding matters of safety compliance, records, and best
practices, survey participants had a variety of responses.

38% 29% 25% 8%

of those polled do a perform only do not vet or
vet or audit “somewhat” minimal vetting audit their
their thorough job and reviewing. contractors for
contractors in vetting safety
“very contractors. compliance
thoroughly.” at all.
In all, 62% of respondents do not feel that they vet their contractors very
thoroughly, demonstrating the current atmosphere of uncertainty when it
comes to managing contractors within a supply chain.

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SKIPPING THE CONTRACTOR AUDIT

Despite a large portion of the respondents feeling that their vetting process is
less than thorough, they are doing little to change it. This brought us to our next
question: Why do some participants chose to skip the process of auditing con-
tractors? While respondents could choose between multiple reasons (and they
were allowed to select more than one reason), the most common answer was
that it had simply never crossed their minds to perform these audits.
Here are detailed results for each reason given for skipping the contractor audit:
• “We simply have never considered it before”: 47%
• “Time constraints”: 26%
• “Administrative difficulty/high complexity in completing the assessments”
or “It isn’t required of us by law”: both 21%
• “We feel that the burden of responsibility will not fall on our
company”: 15%
• “Budget constraints”: 11%
• “We trust our contractors implicitly” or “Lack of information available about
the contractor”: both 5%
Several respondents who specified other reasons for a lack of contractor vetting
or auditing indicated that it was due to a lack of management support for the
process. Specifically, one participant noted “There is resistance from the man-
agement team to implement contractor management [from a] safety and health
perspective,” while another said “Leadership [is] not engaged in current contrac-
tor safety policy.”
These participants, although they do not audit contractors, did show that they
think that safety is important—53% of them still regularly perform internal safe-
ty audits despite choosing to forgo contractor audits. It is unfortunate that their
safety protocols do not extend to their suppliers or vendors.
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 VETTING YOUR CONTRACTORS

After establishing that the majority of

our respondents audit or otherwise
check on the safety performance of
their contractors, we next wanted to
know exactly how they did so. Par-
ticipants perform a variety of steps
in their auditing processes, and here
are most common ones taken (par-
ticipants were allowed to select more
than one answer option):

80% verify the contractor has

adequate insurance coverage

62% review the contractor’s safety

training programs

review the contractor’s

60% written safety policies and
procedures

look into the contractor’s rep-

59% utation in the industry (i.e.,
word-of-mouth)

48% track a contractor’s Total Re-

cordable Injury Rate (TRIR)

46% regularly perform full safety

15% of those polled specified other audits of all contractors
steps that they take, and several of
these respondents indicated that 45% review and verify OSHA logs
they audit their contractors via a
third party.
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 HOW ARE CONTRACTORS AUDITED
We next asked by what method(s)
survey participants perform contrac-
tor safety audits.
• 68% perform on-site inspections,
making this the most popular
way to audit contractors.
• 60% conduct formal, in-person
meetings
• 57% request applicable infor-
mation and records from the
contractor (either mail or e-mail
communication)
• 25% hold a phone call or tele-
conference meeting
• 14% use software, an app, or
some other form of computer
auditing system
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When it comes to how frequently
respondents perform full audits of
contractors that work for their organi-
zations:
• 33% perform them at the compa-
ny’s discretion as host employer
• 17% perform audits annually
• 16% audit contractors upon the
start or renewal of a contract
• 14% never perform full audits
at all
Smaller portions of the response pool
(8% and 5%, respectfully) conduct full
audits either every 6 months or every
3 years.
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 CONTRACTORS’ PERFORMANCE
UNDER AUDIT

During their most

recent audit of
contractors, when it
came to written
safety manuals,
policies, and/or
procedures:

• 70% of respondents found the

materials to be adequate.
• 12% determined their contractors’
materials were exceptional.
• 13% found the materials to be
substandard.
• 4% revealed the materials to be
incomplete or nonexistent.

When it came to insurance coverage among audited contractors:

• 93% of participants determined coverage was adequate.
• 4% determined coverage was below their required standards.
• 2% discovered that coverage was nonexistent.
And, finally, when it came to
audited safety training materials and procedures:
• 69% of respondents found contractors’ training programs to
be adequate.
• 10% determined the training programs were exceptional.
• 14% found training programs to be substandard.
• 7% could find no proof that training had even been conducted.
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AUDIT CONSEQUENCES

41% of survey
6%
of participants
11%
of those polled have
respondents have admitted that at their escaped a citation or
terminated a organization, fine by providing proof
contract because of contractors have failed that an offending
the contractor’s audits … but the contractor had been
failure to pass a contract was not sufficiently audited and
terminated. passed—a good
safety audit or
example of due
inspection.
diligence paying off.

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 WHO RESPONDED?

The 308 participants in the Supply Chain and Sus-

tainability Survey work in a variety of job positions,
the large majority of whom (62%) are Safety or
EHS managers. A further 17% of respondents are
directors of Safety, EHS, or human resources (HR),
and 8% are frontline supervisors. The remaining
13% of the response pool was made up of execu-
tives, managers of departments outside of the EHS
function, staff-level employees, and consultants/
contractors.
37% of respondents work at organizations that
employ 500 or more employees, while 25% re-
ported from smaller companies of 99 or fewer
employees. The remaining 38% work at business-
es that employ between 100 and 499 workers.
The top industry represented in the survey was
manufacturing, which made up 45% of the re-
sponse pool. Other industries with a strong pres-
ence in the Supply Chain and Sustainability Survey
included construction (10%), transportation and
warehousing (7%), and the following three indus-
tries each made up 4% of the response pool:
1. Utilities;
2. Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction;
and
3. Professional, scientific, or technical services.
A large portion of the respondents (12%) specified
other industries of which they are a part, including:
• Wastewater
• Security
• Data centers
• Federal government

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