Project Onboarding

Project Onboarding

This may be the most laborious activity that is created for every project that’s announced. There are usually multiple levels, contractors, subcontractor workers and employees brought together in a short timeframe.

In the majority of projects, assembling workers from multiple employers into one organized workflow is an exercise in frustration. Each level of management on the project will have their own requirements, which the H&S department of the prime contractor will try to manage and implement in some type of structure. The owner will state the project requirements that it expects adherence to, the prime will have additional requirements and the subcontractors will be a third level of stakeholder that must comply with all of them.

While all parties will be governed by the legislation in the province where the construction will occur, each level has its own required elements regarding orientations, training, and certifications. Altogether, there are many required items to be completed, submitted, recorded, and made available to stakeholders at different times over the entire project, not just during onboarding.

Looking from the prime contractors’ point of view, they must work to ensure that the required elements are stated correctly, submitted by the subcontractors in a timely manner, recorded and maintained for review by the owner if, and when, requested. Prime contractors will normally assign an onboarding coordinator to the project to be the contact point for information and document submission. There are however, several issues with the process that reoccur on every project. Below are the two stages of project onboarding.

Process or Lack of..

• The biggest issue is that there usually isn’t an established process for onboarding; the prime will normally have to create the process once awarded the project from the new owner/client. Emailing certificates and static spreadsheets isn’t a process and only serves to complicate the task.
• There is always a certain amount of ambiguity regarding an acceptable level of training, with various certifications being appropriate/satisfactory, while others are not/insufficient. Think H2S training, Awareness vs H2S. Clarity from the Prime contractor is required at the start of the project, from one contact point.
• Sub Contractors continuously ask if the internal training they’ve provided to their employees will meet the requirements and often the answer is no.  This leads to frustration, since the training isn’t from an approved provider that’s been identified at the Prime Contractor level.
• Submissions come from subcontractor companies into the prime contractor in a variety of formats that must reviewed and organized. Usually, the prime will ask for an individual’s file that is in a spreadsheet owned by the onboarding administration. This leads to siloed information that may or may not be current.
• Normally, there is no information portal set up to answer FAQ’s or provide a single source of reference/authority/accuracy where people can access the latest information regarding onboarding This leads to relying on individual opinions and conversations to govern what is required for submissions, fragmenting the entire process.
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• The training requirements will be based on individual positions/roles/jobs/functions/responsibilities, tasks being performed on the project, type of equipment being operated, While certain tickets are always expected (Trade tickets), others are not easily defined when a “Worker” is onsite but not involved in all activities. An example that always comes up for laborer’s is when lifting or excavating may be occurring/required. Does every laborer onsite need to have Hoisting and Rigging training, Ground Disturbance, Level 101 Awareness or 201 Supervisory?
• Levels of computer literacy aren’t considered when submission requests are sent out from the prime contractor, which quickly becomes an issue at the subcontractor level as soon as individuals are required to submit Individuals will send images of monitors showing a “finished” screen, not a certificate containing date of completion, etc. The emailed photo is then received by the prime, and if reviewed for verification or during an audit, rejected. PDF, JPEG, .XLS or .DOC are terms that are meaningless to a lot of individuals.
• Personal information must be handled carefully as transferring, storing or posting certain information is a sensitive privacy issue and must be There must be a clear process that explains what type of information will be asked for and what are the accepted formats that he/she must use. Think D&A testing, where the individuals pre access test results are routinely sent in to produce a “certificate” but instead should be held by the employer, with a letter to the prime stating the individual has successfully taken a Pre Access screening and the employer can produce/provide the results if required.
• The transfer of certification copies, entering of “date obtained”, monitoring of “expiry dates”, course equivalencies, and distribution to stakeholders are all filled with errors, due to number of times entered, formatting by each stakeholder and personal labelling preferences.

Without a clear path laid out in the planning phase of a project, companies can expect that there will be a constant uphill battle, both internally for submission and externally at the prime contractor level, where the intake and gathering of all training records must be compiled for review and verification.