A guide to contracting outside expertise

Lawrence Waterman | Feature | HSW
15.09.2007

Contracting outside help in discharging your duty of care to protect employees and others from workplace hazards is not as simple as ringing a plumber.

Though your motivation for bringing in a consultant may be at least partly to lighten some of your load, the process of finding the right person requires work, especially in the preparatory stages. Before you go looking for people to shortlist, it is worthwhile  doing some preliminary thinking and a little basic research.

First of all, it's essential to clarify exactly what you want from the consultancy and why you are going outside to get it.

"If you are choosing a consultant to avoid the challenge of developing the necessary expertise in-house, you perhaps ought to think again," says Roger Bibbings, head of occupational health at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).

Bibbings says he is not questioning the wisdom of contracting outside expertise in all circumstances, just suggesting it is always worth a little reflection to make sure you are not trying to pass on responsibilities that must remain with the employer.

If you are sure you need a consultant, you need to know exactly what for. "Clients should have a clear view of what they are looking to get out of it," says Tom Stewart, managing director of the System Concepts consultancy, "whether it is documentation they can use to satisfy themselves they've done it correctly, or whether they have a problem they want to solve and documenting it is almost a by-product."

Returning to his theme of in-house expertise being the best option, Roger Bibbings suggests another sensible aim is to have the consultant transfer specialist skills to the organisation, working themselves out of a job.

Whatever you expect or need to be the successful outcome of the consultancy process - skills transfer, problem solving or providing compliance documentation - set it down, along with the practical details, such as any budget and time constraints. These will form the basis of your specification to invite tenders for the work. It's also a good idea to draft a summary description of your organisation: what it does; employee and site numbers; and a general feel for how it works.

A little knowledge

Though the point of bringing in a specialist is usually to supply intelligence and competence you do not have in-house, Cheryl Burton, sales and marketing director at health, safety and environment consultancy Sypol, notes that you cannot get by without a basic understanding of what you will be contracting them to do.

"One of the problems we often find is that people don't know what they should be wanting," she says. "They don't have the qualifications they need to understand what's right and wrong.

"I've seen fire risk assessments produced by a consultant who hasn't even had a conversation with any member of staff on the premises, and the output was very poor," she adds. "But the person who paid for it thought it was fine. So you have to know what good looks like in terms of compliance standards."

Once you have a clear brief defining your needs, you can begin building a shortlist of suitable organisations or candidates to fulfil it.

The major professional bodies, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM), can also recommend consultants, and the organisations representing specific disciplines, such as the British Occupational Hygiene Society or the Ergonomics Society, will have lists of members who offer consultancy services.

The first filter in considering who to see is to check that candidates are suitably qualified. They should be willing to supply certificates for general qualifications such as the NEBOSH National Diploma or a Bachelors' degree, membership of professional bodies such as those above, plus certificates accrediting training in any specialist skills.

These are essential in areas such as fire risk assessment, where your duty is to appoint a fully competent person and to be able to prove you've done so.

Another consideration at the initial whittling-down stage is whether you prefer to work with a sole trader or a larger consulting organisation.

"Of course you will probably pay more if you go to a consulting organisation than to an own-account operator," says Roger Bibbings at RoSPA, which offers its own consultancy services, "but the larger organisation probably has connections with other services and support that the own-account operator hasn't."

It is worth asking larger consultancies about their staff turnover; both to avoid having to brief successive consultants on your project and because high levels of labour turnover are not usually a recommendation of the quality of the organisation.

Whichever you decide on, large or small, check they have the appropriate professional indemnity insurance. Also, clarify exactly what is included in their daily or hourly rates and what will be charged separately.

In person

From a list of consultants who meet the basic grade - in that they are suitably qualified and can be available at the locations and times you need them - the final elimination should involve face-to-face meetings with the candidates at your premises. Most consultants should want to make a site visit to help them scope the work anyway.

At interview you want to put as much flesh as possible on the skeleton of the consultants' CVs. "Put them through the mill a bit," advocates Cheryl Burton at Sypol. "Ask lots of questions to see if they will fit your organisation."

Tom Stewart agrees the issue of organisational fit is an important one.
"You want them to have experience of organisations that behave in the same way as yours," he says. "Some places are very formal: if it's not done with lots of forms and documentation, nothing will happen. Other places are much more laid back. It's important you find consultants who support the way you work."

Roger Bibbings backs him up: "You are looking at how well they will fit in and work with your business and what kind of partnership you will have with them. They need to have some kind of sympathy for your business and what you are trying to do."

Another related issue is that of personality fit. If you or whoever will be supervising the consultant don't get on with them, the relationship is not likely to be as productive. For this reason, when dealing with a larger consultancy you want assurances that whoever you interview will be the person doing the bulk of the work.

The interview also provides a chance to test professional competence in person. Tom Stewart says that sample reports and examples of previous work submitted in advance are not always a reliable indicator of quality.

"Often the material a company brings has been well prepared. You never know how many people behind the scenes were working to make sure that was correct, or how long it took them. So asking them on the spot how they would address an issue and getting them to talk you through their approach can be useful."

Stewart emphasises this is not a question of trying to catch anyone out and that giving a candidates a fair chance to describe how they have solved previous practical problems and would tackle future ones, as in any job interview, simply allows them to prove they know what they are about.

As with any competitive interview process, it is important you ask the candidates the same questions so you can compare them fairly.

Roger Bibbings recommends clients plough through their shortlists even if the first interviewee seems like a good fit. "You learn a lot through the selection process," he advises, "and it's worth going through it, then checking if your preconceptions have changed before you make a final selection."

Toe in the water

The interview stage should leave you with one or two obvious candidates whose skills and qualities make them seem a safe bet. If you haven't done so already, now is the time to follow up references from their previous clients. If possible, talk to referees in organisations of a similar size and sector to your own.

Tom Stewart says that it shouldn't necessarily be a cause for concern if a consultant can't put forward all their most impressive clients as referees. "A lot of bigger companies are becoming more and more nervous about giving references," he notes. "They are worried about being sued."

A positive reference should be the last reassurance you need before making a final choice or moving to sign a contract with your preferred choice. Even here, Stewart says, there is still room for caution. If you are looking at long-term consultancy or a large project, he suggests contracting your consultant for a subset of the overall work and seeing how they handle it, and how you get on, before committing yourself completely.

"I think often people start with something quite modest, and we'd encourage that as well," he says.

So now you have secured a reliable external source of expertise and advice, all you have to do is make sure you use it to your best advantage. How to do that will be the theme of a future article.

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