Challenging the notion of contractors at NOSHCON

The NOSHCON event, which was held in late August in KwaZulu-Natal, saw KBC Health and Safety being offered an elective speaking position on its recently launched Contactor Passport™ due to its value and relevance for all parties in attendance.

KBC managing director, Graham Emmett, spoke on the topic of contractors in industry. Emmett’s presentation titled, “Managing Contractors: From Pirates of the Caribbean to Partners in Profit”, detailed how, by streamlining the processes surrounding contractor management, contractors could begin to be viewed as partners and allies on the route to achieving profits; thereby essentially changing contractors from being viewed as “pirates in profit” to “partners in profit”.

The solution posed in the presentation is that of the Contractor Passport™ – a system that streamlines the movement of contractors through the on boarding process. The Contractor Passport™ is a card-based system utilising a central database repository system. The database acts as a hub for storing all SHE data for every contractor and employee that sets foot on an operational site. KBC aims to provide the Contractor Passport™ tool as a solution for industry to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the on boarding process.

Through KBC’s concept of “reciprocity” – whereby many mines in a given geographical region accept its safety induction training as the standard for induction purposes and therefore agree not to re-train contractors who have a valid, relevant KBC safety training certificate – contractors who train with KBC are able to move from one mine to several others without having to repeat training at each new site.

The benefits of this system clearly translate into time and money savings, with the added advantage of having a single benchmark standard of competence which creates a minimum, formalised standard of training and can help reduce the inequalities of having different training done by different providers. 

KBC project co-ordinator Chris Taylor, points out that the presentation made by Emmett was very well-received, with the conference room being filled well beyond capacity, and was followed by a number of enquiries, which is a testament to the amount of interest the Contractor Passport™ attracted at the event. Furthermore, Taylor adds that the Contractor Passport™ has successfully completed pilot projects at both Vodacom South Africa and Anglo American, with the latter implementing a national roll-out of the system from January 2012. KBC Health and Safety’s new Steelpoort branch together with the Contractor Passport™ was officially launched on 6 October.