Safety management problems encountered by industrial service providers

Companies operating in the industrial sector are increasingly outsourcing some of their operations to provider companies. Outsourcing involves external workforces and workplaces and forms new kinds of work communities with complex relationships between different performers. The new operating environment introduces safety problems, which are particularly difficult to manage for providers that commonly operate with several customers in varying worksites. This paper discusses the results of a literature review focusing on the safety management problems encountered by industrial service providers. The factors most commonly mentioned as problems for service providers in management of safety are ignoring tendering systems, divergences in customers and worksites, time pressures, poor resource available for implementation of safety measures, unclear responsibilities, dangerous work tasks, inadequate communication, and insufficiencies in hazard identification. Even though several problems have been identified, the practical means presented to improve safety by the provider companies are still exiguous.