Uncover how one of Australia's largest utilities service providers transformed contractor management for their business, facilitating end-to-end visibility for improved workforce compliance.
Comdain Infrastructure is a division of Service Stream, a publicly listed Australian company. They specialise in providing engineering and asset management services, primarily within the utilities sector. Their key focus areas include gas and water distribution maintenance and construction, as well as irrigation modernisation capital works programs. They have a significant field-based workforce and an extensive subcontractor workforce.
Multinet Gas have a well-developed set of required contractor competencies, skills and accreditations required by field personnel working on their assets. Comdain's gas maintenance field workers including employees and subcontractors are required to have up to date competencies, skills, regular training refreshers, specialist certifications and qualifications.
SafetyInsights has given us the ability for early contractor credentials, competencies and insurance related actions for assured compliance.
The Challenge
Planning, monitoring and ensuring compliance with this strict competency requirements combined with validating insurances and company credentials is complex and time sensitive. 85% of the 350 personnel working on this gas distribution maintenance contract were sub-contractors. The existing systems in place however didn't provide Comdain Infrastructure with the transparency, oversight and detailed analysis needed to properly manage, monitor and confirm compliance across such an extensive workforce.
Subcontractor data and crucial documentation such as qualifications, competencies and insurance certificates sat in disparate systems. Moreover, historical data was paper based and in excel further impacting the to seamlessly monitor individual compliance. This resulted in a lack of oversight to understand upcoming or overdue licenses, or track issue resolution. All of which are critical to properly manage risk and ensure auditability.
Additionally, while on the surface top line audit scores remained positive, Comdain observed certain behaviours starting to creep in. Without a centralised solution plus granular data the client was unable to have an early warning of potential subcontractor non-compliances around competencies, qualifications, training and insurances.:
Our Solution
To strengthen its contractor management, Comdain Infrastructure required a seamless, data-driven system designed to deliver a single source of truth. Paramount to the client's needs was a thorough overview of how each contractor measures against fundamental requirements to proactively manage risk. Planning, monitoring and ensuring compliance was key, as was a solution that monitored insurances and company credentials.
We deployed SafetyInsights as the foundational platform, providing a fully Managed Service. This included the development of bespoke contractor management dashboards and strategic advisory support, ensuring the solution aligned closely with the client's operational realities. Our focus was on creating end-to-end visibility of contractor performance and compliance. The dashboard tracks trends and flags areas of concern by linking safety performance with contractor skills, training, and experience. This oversight provided operational leaders with the insights needed to address safety and compliance risks before incidents occur. Optimised for mobile access, Management and Supervisors could monitor contractor safety trends across individuals, companies, locations, and activities from any device. This enabled early conversations around specific poor performing audit areas with the subcontractors.
We also transitioned the client's historical paper-based and Excel-driven contractor audit processes to an electronic audit tool and central database. This shift enabled deeper analysis, moving beyond simple audit scores to examine contractor backgrounds, work histories, and risk patterns. This helped the client identify root causes and target improvement efforts more effectively.
The Impact
The success of audits, skills, compliance and trend analysis for contractors has been transformational for the business, resulting in the adoption of SafetyInsights across their Comdain's broader maintenance contract portfolio. The solution has enabled early identification emerging high risk areas of concern, enabling action and improvements across the business, such as:
Compliance Management
Through SafetyInsights Comdain has been able to efficiently monitor all aspects of contractor compliance and maintain a fully qualified workforce. Real-time tracking of contractor qualifications has led to emerging risks being identified 30% faster, and proactive alerts has resulted in a 60% improvement in compliance rates.
Documentation Control
Critical contractor data is now housed in one centralised solution, improving information accuracy by 100%. Efficiency of document verification has also been greatly improved, reducing the time spent preparing contractor compliance reports by 50%.
Performance Managment
Compliance gaps were reduced by 60% as the solution enabled all personnel to monitor the status of their credentials and be alerted of any potential performance issues. Moreover, by having access to their own performance dashboards, Contractors improved their response times by 30% and were able to reduce administrative workload by 50%.
Key Results
Improvement in early risk detection and reporting
Improvement in data quality and integrity
Reduced administrative hours spent
Improvement in contractor competency and credentials compliance rates
Testimonial
“SafetyInsights has been a game-changer for our business operations in the gas sector. We now have a robust understanding of how our contractors meet compliance requirements, can ensure their skills and expertise meet our needs and are alerted ahead of time of any areas of risk. It has vastly improved the management of our contractors, compliance rates, assurance and oversight which we were looking for.”
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