Contracting and Safety

This open access book examines the increase in outsourcing, contracting and subcontracting as ways of organising work. It explores the impact of these employment arrangements on public safety, particularly when they are linked to complex supply networks in a range of engineering industries including oil and gas, nuclear power and aviation.

The brief provides practical recommendations on how best to manage arrangements that target short-term profitability and also maintain excellence in long-term safety outcomes. The brief is a source of advice for organisations on how to maximise the benefits and minimise long-term system reliability issues that can be introduced by contracting and outsourcing, rather than assuming it to be a wholly negative or positive practice.

Contracting and Safety comprises qualitative, empirical studies focusing on high-reliability organisation. As such, this brief provides a rich picture of the experience of working in complexsupply chains. It will be of interest to researchers in industrial safety, as well as safety professionals and project managers within engineering industries.

• Risk Governance
• Contracting Safety
• Supply Chain Management
• Subcontracting
• Safety Regulation
• Contractor Safety
• Safety in Outsourcing
• Open Access

• School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

  Jan Hayes

• Département Sciences Sociales et de Gestion, IMT Atlantique, Nantes, France

  Stéphanie Tillement

Professor Jan Hayes has 35 years’ experience in safety and risk management.  Her current activities cover academia, consulting and regulation.  She is Program Leader for the social science safety research activities of the Future Fuels Cooperative Research Centre and a Board Safety Assurance Advisor for Airservices Australia.  Prof Hayes is a former member of the Advisory Board of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority. Her research interests all connect to organisational accident prevention and include professionalism, expertise, decision making and use of standards.

Stephanie Tillement holds an Associate Professor appointment at IMT Atlantique. After graduating in industrial engineering, she then obtained a PhD in industrial sociology. Her research interests focus on process safety (notably in the railway and nuclear industries), high-risk project management and risk governance. She has been coordinating the AGORAS research project since 2014, funded by the French national research agency (ANR) and the Investissement d’Avenir program on nuclear risks governance and management. Within the framework of the RESOH Chair (REsearch on Safety Organization Human), she leads research on high reliability project organizing and the impacts of outsourcing on safety.  She has publishing experience in various peer-reviewed journals and books, such as management, Project Management Journal, Cognition Technology & Work and Presses des Mine.

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