INDUSTRY WHITEPAPER · CONTRACTOR SAFETY
Four Out of Five Workers Who Die on Your Site
Don't Work for You.
In the cleanest federal accounting of oil and gas extraction deaths, roughly four out of five workers killed were employed by contractors — not the operator whose name is on the lease. OSHA already holds the controlling employer responsible for those crews; most safety software prices them out. This paper gives you one number to measure the gap — the Contractor Safety Reach Score — and a two-sided playbook to close it.
WHAT IS THE CONTRACTOR SAFETY GAP?
The contractor safety gap is the blind spot that forms when the highest-risk workers on a site — contractors and subs, who account for roughly four of five oil & gas extraction deaths — sit outside the operator's safety system, even though OSHA holds the controlling employer responsible for them. The Contractor Safety Reach Score measures that gap in a single number.
Free report · Score your contractor safety reach · Grounded in NIOSH, BLS CFOI, OSHA & Solis v. Summit.
of oil & gas extraction worker deaths (2014–2019) were contractors, not the operator.
typical per-seat safety-software price — why a three-day crew never gets licensed.
one U.S. worker dies on the job roughly every 104 minutes (BLS CFOI, 2024).
WHY THE HIGHEST-RISK CREWS ARE OUTSIDE YOUR SYSTEM
The Gap Isn't a Culture Problem.
It's a Design Problem.
The contractor safety gap is not a training failure or a paperwork failure. It is the predictable result of three forces that line up in the same place: the risk concentrates on contractors, the law makes the controlling employer responsible for them, and the pricing model keeps them off the system.
01
The People You Cannot See
The highest-fatality population on your site is structurally outside your safety system. In the NIOSH oil & gas data, well-servicing and drilling contractors accounted for roughly four of every five deaths; operators, about one in twenty. The fatal events are field events — vehicle, struck-by, caught-in — the kind a real pre-job brief catches, when a pre-job brief actually happens.
02
The Law Already Made Them Yours
OSHA's multi-employer citation policy holds the controlling employer responsible for crews that aren't on its payroll. In Solis v. Summit Contractors, a general contractor was cited for a sub's fall-protection violation even though none of its own employees were exposed — its superintendent saw the hazard and warned the sub, and that was not enough. Noticing is not a system.
03
The Per-Seat Safety Tax
Most platforms are licensed per named user, commonly $24 to $29 per month. Licensing a twelve-person crew for a four-day job means buying a month of seats — so short-duration crews stay on paper. The commercial model of safety software quietly guarantees the highest-risk population on your site is the population you cannot see. That is a design problem, and it can be designed away.
THE CONTRACTOR SAFETY REACH SCORE
One Number You Can Compute
This Week, With a Clipboard.
The gap is a measurement failure before it is a safety failure. If the field data from four-fifths of your exposed workforce never arrives, your leading indicators describe the wrong people — a clean dashboard that produces false confidence. The fix starts with one honest number.
HOW TO COMPUTE IT IN ONE SHIFT
1. Pick a normal working day, not one you prepared for. 2. Count every person on site by employer — your people, each contractor, each sub-tier sub, each visitor doing work. 3. For each employer, count how many have safety work captured in your system today. 4. Divide. That percentage is your score.
READING YOUR SCORE
Your safety data describes a minority of the people exposed to your hazards. Your leading indicators are not measuring your real risk. Treat this as an exposure, not a project.
Your own crews are covered and your contractors are not. The most common result. Your controlling-employer duty spans the whole site, but your visibility stops at your badge.
Good reach, but short-duration subs, sub-tier subs, and surge crews slip through. These crews have the least site familiarity, so the residual gap is riskier than its size suggests.
You can see the people actually exposed to your hazards. Now the leading indicators mean something, and you can manage risk instead of counting paperwork.
Do it by employer, not just in aggregate — the aggregate hides the danger. An owner with 400 badged employees and 60 contractor workers can post a respectable overall score while the contractor slice sits at zero. The slice at zero is where the fatality risk lives. Then ask the follow-up: for the workers you did capture, could you prove it — to a regulator, an owner, or a court — without a scramble?
THE TWO-SIDED PLAYBOOK
Both Sides Have to Move.
One Capture Serves Both.
The gap has two sides. When field data is captured once, at the point of work, by every worker regardless of employer, the owner gets visibility and the contractor gets proof from the same act. When it isn't, both sides lose — in the place where four of five deaths occur.
If You're the Owner, You Must Be Able to See:
- Every worker on site today, by employer, including sub-tier subs.
- Whether each crew completed its pre-job brief or JSA before work started — today, not last week.
- Hazards and near-misses from contractor crews, in the same feed as your own.
- Permits (hot work, confined space, LOTO) live, with approvals and escalations.
- Contractor safety performance over time, before the next award.
- Evidence a hazard on someone else's crew was corrected and closed — not just mentioned.
If You're the Contractor, You Must Be Able to Prove:
- That every person, including short-service employees, ran the process on every job.
- That crews caught and reported hazards — not just that they signed forms.
- That permits were verified at the point of work, not initialed at the trailer.
- That your safety record is real and auditable — because it wins your next contract.
- That you can plug into the owner's process without a parallel paper system.
YOUR NEXT 90 DAYS
A Plan That Needs No New Safety Philosophy.
WEEK 1 · MEASURE
Score It Honestly
Compute your Contractor Safety Reach Score by employer, on an ordinary day. Share it with leadership without softening it.
WEEKS 2–4 · TARGET
Fix the Worst Slice
Pick the worst employer slice — usually short-duration subs — and get them capturing on one process. If a new sub crew's first pre-job brief takes more than a few minutes, the tool is the obstacle.
WEEKS 5–8 · REMOVE
Kill the Per-Seat Barrier
If your system can't bring an unbadged three-day crew onto the same process at no per-head cost, that constraint is now your top safety risk. Say so, in those words, to whoever owns the budget.
WEEKS 9–12 · RE-SCORE
Trust the Indicators
Re-score. Only then start trusting your leading indicators — because now they describe the people actually exposed to your hazards.
CONTRACTOR SAFETY QUESTIONS
Frequently Asked Questions.
What Is the Contractor Safety Gap?
It's the blind spot created when the highest-risk workers on a site — contractors and subs — sit outside the operator's safety system, even though OSHA's multi-employer policy holds the controlling employer responsible for them. In oil & gas extraction, contractors account for roughly four of five deaths.
What Is the Contractor Safety Reach Score?
One number: the workers on site today whose safety work is captured in your system, divided by the total workers on site today, times 100. Compute it by employer on an ordinary day — the aggregate hides a contractor slice sitting near zero.
Why Are Contractors the Highest-risk Workers on Site?
They do the highest-hazard field work, and the fatal events are field events — vehicle, struck-by, caught-in — the kind a real pre-job brief catches. In the NIOSH oil & gas data, contractors were ~4 of 5 deaths; operators about one in twenty.
Isn't Contractor Safety the Contractor's Own Responsibility?
OSHA's multi-employer citation policy makes the controlling employer responsible for crews that aren't on its payroll. In Solis v. Summit Contractors, a GC was cited for a sub's violation with no employees of its own exposed — noticing the hazard was not enough. Noticing is not a system.
Why Does Per-seat Pricing Create a Safety Problem?
Most platforms license per named user (commonly $24–$29/mo), so licensing a 12-person crew for a 4-day job means buying a month of seats — and short-duration crews stay on paper. The pricing model keeps the highest-risk population off the system; removing that per-seat barrier is the fix.
Run the Number. See Who's Actually on Your Site.
The Full Whitepaper, the Reach Score Method, and the Two-Sided Playbook.
Download the paper to score your own contractor safety reach, or bring us one form your crews use today and one contractor crew you cannot currently see — and watch both come alive in twenty minutes.
