"ContractorManage gave us a direct return on investment and our contractor management risk mitigation has come on in leaps and bounds."
By Andrew Gay (General Manager, the Royal Adelaide Golf Club, April 2021)
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THE BACKGROUND:
"As one of Australia’s most prestigious private golf courses, the Royal Adelaide Golf Club has always placed high value on sound workplace safety and risk management. Annually we have the benefit of third party auditing engaged by our Committee to assess compliance and provide recommendations for improvement. We’d always taken particular care with the selection of third party specialist contractors coming onsite, but our audit in 2019 faced my team with some key challenges that we had to overcome. THE ISSUES THE AUDIT IDENTIFIED: The audit was conducted by Risk Management Essentials and they identified that our document management system for tracking, managing and storing compliance-related records of our contractors needed real improvement. We all needed to be able to easily verify that everyone was correctly licenced, insured and registered for their profession. Risk Management Essentials highlighted to the Committee that unless we implemented a contractor management framework, we potentially had exposure in the event they had an accident or serious injury onsite. |
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OUR EXISTING SYSTEMS:
Up to this point in time, we had managed this by emailing and phoning contractors to request copies of their licenses and certificates - and then recording everything in an Excel spreadsheet, with the files and documents stored individually on our network drive.
Our Membership Officer was managing this job, but she found that many contractors wouldn’t respond to the requests and other responsibilities could easily take precedence. There always seemed to be more chasing up to do, and achieving a satisfactory level of compliance was proving to be highly difficult using these manual processes. As the auditors highlighted, we really needed to find a better way.
Up to this point in time, we had managed this by emailing and phoning contractors to request copies of their licenses and certificates - and then recording everything in an Excel spreadsheet, with the files and documents stored individually on our network drive.
Our Membership Officer was managing this job, but she found that many contractors wouldn’t respond to the requests and other responsibilities could easily take precedence. There always seemed to be more chasing up to do, and achieving a satisfactory level of compliance was proving to be highly difficult using these manual processes. As the auditors highlighted, we really needed to find a better way.
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THE SELECTION PROCESS:
We then scoured the market to find a technology solution and found Contractor-HQ who offer a cloud-based system (called “ContractorManage”) that could provide us with the standardised framework we needed to save time and provide the reassurance we needed. I liked how it offers a means to automate the process of capturing and maintaining contractor compliance with all of our suppliers utilised - both “in the shed” and around the clubhouse. They also promised to extend the reach of our risk management procedures by also capturing documentation of our suppliers and their staff who were coming onsite to conduct works. Lastly, their system would also ensure that everyone coming onsite would be inducted signed in/out electronically. |
Andrew Gay (General Manager, the Royal Adelaide Golf Club) using ContractorManage.
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"It ticked a lot of our boxes, as the company was Australian-based and the people we spoke to were both quick to reply and well-informed - so we decided to adopt their software as a service (SaaS) platform; ContractorManage."
OUR IMPLEMENTATION:
As we commenced the implementation process, the Contractor-HQ team started by giving our site induction a quick refresh and set it up to be completed via an online form.
We then started uploading our suppliers onto the system using the prompts and, to be honest, it all sounded a little too easy. One of the main benefits of using their contractor management platform is how they’ve mapped the supplier types (i.e. Electrician) with the appropriate documentation (i.e. Public Liability Insurance, Workers Compensation, Electricians Licence, and Safe Work Procedures) that they’re required to upload direct onto the system for our verification. So all we had to do is add them to the system, categorise by the activities they’re performing and then the ContractorManage software automatically chases them up.
To reiterate, it all sounded a little too easy.
As we commenced the implementation process, the Contractor-HQ team started by giving our site induction a quick refresh and set it up to be completed via an online form.
We then started uploading our suppliers onto the system using the prompts and, to be honest, it all sounded a little too easy. One of the main benefits of using their contractor management platform is how they’ve mapped the supplier types (i.e. Electrician) with the appropriate documentation (i.e. Public Liability Insurance, Workers Compensation, Electricians Licence, and Safe Work Procedures) that they’re required to upload direct onto the system for our verification. So all we had to do is add them to the system, categorise by the activities they’re performing and then the ContractorManage software automatically chases them up.
To reiterate, it all sounded a little too easy.
Royal Adelaide Golf Club. Est. 1892
INITIAL IMPACT:
After adding our first batch of around 10 suppliers to the system, the results were almost immediate as the very next day, we were notified that documents had already been uploaded and were ready for us to approve online. From there, we continued to add more suppliers to the system and the process repeated itself.
The great thing we found was that we could view a snapshot of our supplier’s compliance status via a dashboard which let us ensure that any tradesmen coming onsite were qualified and compliant. After Risk Management Essentials conducted their initial review of our systems, they provided a glowing report to the committee which was a great outcome.
THE FUTURE:
Moving forward, we aim to continue on our path of “continual improvement” with Contractor-HQ to build further tools that’ll help our day-to-day operations. We recommend using ContractorManage and working with their team to any Australian golf clubs (big or small) that want to save time, improve their risk management procedures and apply best practices in contractor management."
After adding our first batch of around 10 suppliers to the system, the results were almost immediate as the very next day, we were notified that documents had already been uploaded and were ready for us to approve online. From there, we continued to add more suppliers to the system and the process repeated itself.
The great thing we found was that we could view a snapshot of our supplier’s compliance status via a dashboard which let us ensure that any tradesmen coming onsite were qualified and compliant. After Risk Management Essentials conducted their initial review of our systems, they provided a glowing report to the committee which was a great outcome.
THE FUTURE:
Moving forward, we aim to continue on our path of “continual improvement” with Contractor-HQ to build further tools that’ll help our day-to-day operations. We recommend using ContractorManage and working with their team to any Australian golf clubs (big or small) that want to save time, improve their risk management procedures and apply best practices in contractor management."
