How to Build Contractor and Subcontractor Safety Partnerships with Tim Rich | Risk Matrix Episode 146

Risk Matrix #146: How to Build Contractor and Subcontractor Safety Partnerships with Tim Rich

“If we have an injury, that’s our injury. That is a combined shared injury between us. We share the fault, we share the responsibility and we share the action to fix it.”

Pre-qualification systems tell you what a contractor submitted. They do not tell you what happens on the job site when things get hard.

In this episode, Dr. Martin and James sit down with Tim Rich, Construction Safety Manager at Boardwalk Pipelines, to answer a question every hiring client and safety professional needs to address: what does effective contractor and subcontractor safety management look like beyond the pre-qualification portal?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A strong pre-qualification score is the beginning of due diligence, not the end. Tim Rich explains why Boardwalk Pipelines puts boots on the ground with every new contractor regardless of their Veriforce score. Each year Boardwalk hosts a two-day Contractor Alliance Summit in Houston bringing alliance contractors together around a shared safety and quality agenda. The 2026 theme: We Are One Team. What the superintendent does on site, whether they reinforce safety standards when it costs time and money, is what tells the real story.
• Contractors are employers. The operator is not their safety mom and dad. James Junkin has spent nearly 30 years hearing the same phrase post-incident: the operator did not tell me I had to do it. Under OSHA’s multi-employer citation policy, OSHA responsibility is non-delegable. Hiring clients may transfer liability in some cases but they cannot transfer a contractor’s obligation to identify hazards and protect their workers. This applies regardless of what is written in the contract.
• When a contractor has an incident, treat it as your injury too. Boardwalk Pipelines conducts root cause analysis shoulder to shoulder with their alliance contractors, focuses on sustainable corrective actions over emotionally driven ones, and is building toward a model where contractors proactively share off-project incidents so both parties can prevent similar events before they happen on a Boardwalk job site.

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