The real challenge comes with responsibility and supervising the contractors can be pretty tough at times. From meeting the requirements of the worker to taking care of current insurances, one needs to ensure best practices while completing jobs on-time. But all of this becomes quite easier with the proper contractor management system.
Today, lean practices are embraced by businesses, and therefore outsourcing some job parts to varied companies has become common. When one works on a foundation, other contractors deal with structural steelwork, heating, and alike. Timely completion of daily activities is ensured even when workers are from different backgrounds.
All of the above needs a proper management hierarchy. From controlling the procurement to maintaining relationships with the subcontractors, it might become difficult if clarity doesn’t exist. So, the contractor management system deals with tasks including hiring, providing supervision, and ensuring the safety of the workers outsourced.
Previously, with all these manual tasks, the time consumption was high, and this became a huge distraction for the manager, but with the revolution of SaaS, things are changing around. However, there are dozens of applications and digital tools along with paper documents that are required to be maintained, and one cannot get all these features in just one product. So, outsourcing software development company India or planning to hire a full-time developers will create a lot of opportunities by automating the management of the contractors and getting solutions to fit in the right. It will bring in transformation, experience and will change a lot, positively.
Project Lifecycle- How Will The Contractor Management System Help?
Contractor management is multistage and a highly complex process. Once the bid is won, and a reliable contractor is selected, one needs to allow them for inducting on-site hazards, issuing work orders, access work quality, and much more. But before that, the hiring process is to be planned.
1. Planned Hiring
This is where the management process begins. One can start with establishing a contractor’s requirement, work backward from the project goals and then, breakdown work to be finished. Experience, necessary skills, all are to be determined for the tasks along with risks of injury, project setbacks, etc. together with probability and possible impact.
Now all one needs is a mitigation plan for decreasing such probability and softening the impact. Once done, all of the documents are to be stored on the contractor management system so that they are accessible from anywhere. It will help adjust to the risk mitigation plan, better.
Read More: How to Build Custom Document Management Software for Your Enterprise?
2. Pre-qualified Contractors
Finding the right candidate is a very tough job, and the recruiting process can take a lot of days and hard work. Someone can use the system, type the request and search all the available platforms for a candidate that can meet up with the selected requirements based upon salary, expertise, and physical location.
It takes just 48hrs to find an ideal candidate with the help of these systems, and after getting through with the pre-qualification phase (first step for strong relationship establishment with contractors), one gets their first opportunity for laying down standards, guidelines, and expectations for the outsourced workers.
It all begins with creating the pre-qualification form, which has some questions that require details from contractors to know if they are qualified. The list includes,
- Financial stability
- Deadline meeting ability
- Projects history
- Practices for risk assessment
- Accident history
- Legal history
- Workplace incidents reporting procedure, etc.
The outsourcing software development company in India ensures the software to be perfect. The alarm to make crafty pre-qualification forms and then share it with the contractors for collecting information and for treating them based upon safety records, quality, and experience. One might even feel a need for requesting references while trying to gather information about this contractor, and having a background check will ensure no difficulty and better contractor relationships.
In case the previous project contractors are to be hired, one must ensure to re-qualify (isn’t a one-time activity) them and look for any changes in regards to expired insurances or the safety records.
Monitoring the performance and conducting safety audits, especially for high-risk activities like working with explosives and electricity, will be the right choice. Also asked when you hire full time developer of the contractor management system to make a system that can be usable even by contractors to hire the sub-contractors.
3. Worker Orientation
On-site in a month, there are high chances (3-times) for workers to be injured if they are not experienced. So it is crucial for introducing them with the safety rules and making them aware of the requirements, on-site threats, etc. Conducting orientation process make them know,
- Responsibility chain
- Workers safety procedures
- Emergency plans
- Site layout
- Lock out Tag out
- Personal Protective Equipment, etc.
For the Orientation process to be streamlined, creating site-specific induction handbooks with an online form for the contractor’s help will be effective. One can even add some video materials and then track the worker’s progress while they study the same. The orientation process can be customized based upon the risk level (high risk more in-depth orientation and vice versa) of the contractor.
One should also take care of the procurement during the process. The online catalogue can be used by construction managers. They can even read through the technical documentation, generate the invoices, ensure the procurement status, and much more working online. On a later date, all the invoices can be integrated with the accounting systems for keeping updates about project-related information all in one place. ERP systems can be used for exchanging data 3D models import can be done for exchanging information.
Either way, it is to ensure that none of the companies can receive the work unless otherwise they went through a comprehensive pre-qualification phase and passed through the same.
4. On-site Contractor Supervision
As on-site work starts, the construction manager is required to issue the work orders and make sure that all contractual obligations are fulfilled. Apart from the same, it is also to be ensured that workers get to the site on-time. With the advancement of Technology unavailability of virtual GPS parameters, it will be helpful for automatic check-in for the workers who enter the work facility. It will be efficient to check the compliance and confirm whether or not the workers have been through the orientation process. This technology performs a lot of tasks and is quite helpful.
In some of the country’s special cards are provided to the workers full listing out their proficiencies and their insurance so that they can access the construction site, but with the availability of technology, the mobile application can be created with the help of outsourcing software development company India that will allow the contractors to carry all the certificates on a smartphone.
The contractor management system is also helpful for identifying a potential violation of compliance and ensuring no on-site presence of unauthorized contractors. Apart from that, the system can be helpful for creating a project schedule with the specification of important milestones together with deadlines and the deliverables to show everyone the big picture. It will be capable of doing many more tasks like creating a timetable for the workers, attaching necessary notes and files in regards to completion of work, tagging the location of the workers for verifying their presence on-site, etc.
One must remember that monitoring the performance of workers throughout the project is necessary and the contractor software will be helpful for rating the performance or work quality, compliance and some other metrics for determining their involvement within the project and based upon these ratings work orders can be issued to the trusted contractors. Either way, it is to be made sure that the pre-qualification phase remains quite comprehensive and helps build a trusted relationship.
Read more: Simplifying IT Firm Invoicing with Custom Software
5. Post Contract Evaluation
It is necessary to evaluate the amount of work done so that one can know if it matches up with the expected results or whether one can consider hiring these contractors again.
Using contractor management software herein will provide a complete overview and will help know the performance of the contractor as against other industry peers.
Either way, using weighted scores, it can be very helpful for measuring the work quality, safety records, deadline meet-up, etc., and then ensuring to choose reliable contractors for the next project.
Final Words
Outsourcing software development company India, the task of contractor management software can be very helpful. It will not just improve workplace safety but will also reduce the time which is taken due to repetitive tasks. So, leave behind the old methods and adapt the new system for increasing the efficiency and smoothening the transition. Make sure the implementation process is understood by all, and in case of any concerns, always connect with the company the work has been outsourced with.
