Whether you’re a global firm with thousands of employees or a small regional construction contractor, companies of all sizes and trades can assess their own subcontractors and vendors using Highwire.
That was the focus of a Highwire webinar featuring safety professionals from Rosendin and W. L. French, who shared how they advanced from using Highwire to qualify for work themselves to now using Highwire as a way to assess and manage the safety and financial risk of the subcontractors they hire.
David Tibbetts, Chief Safety Officer at Highwire, was joined by Shayne Stevens, Senior Corporate Director at Rosendin, and Tim Hunt, Director of Environmental Health and Safety at W. L. French, to discuss their companies’ journeys integrating a subcontractor management solution within their organizations.
The dialogue demonstrated that Highwire isn’t just for large asset owners, general contractors, and construction managers looking for alternatives to traditional prequalification but for companies of any size or trade that hire and rely on subcontractors.
Highwire is not just an assessment tool built for large companies — it’s a versatile solution and an approach to risk that fosters collaboration and elevates contractors to deliver great work. Forward-thinking companies know that if you are hiring subcontractors, you may be facing unknown risks.
Four reasons specialty contractors prefer Highwire:
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Prequal That Builds Relationships. Many contractors — as Rosendin and W. L. French attest — have long-standing relationships with the subcontractors that they hire. Rather than relying on a “Yes or No” or “Pass or Fail” assessment result, the companies saw value in understanding each subcontractor’s risks so that informed decisions could be made. When risks are identified, companies can engage subcontractors to proactively address shortcomings rather than disqualifying them outright.
This approach serves to deliver successful outcomes and strengthen partnerships in the process while recognizing that many factors determine which subcontractor is the successful bidder. The pool of available subcontractors who perform specialized work can often be small. Rosendin and W. L. French emphasized that Highwire’s approach helped them shore up existing relationships by providing an in-depth look at growth areas and giving them the tools to engage their partners.
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Digitization that Scales. As contractors grow and begin to rely on more and more subcontractors, they need to upgrade their contractor assessment processes without burdening their subs. Paper-based evaluations, such as what Rosendin relied on before adopting Highwire, become too burdensome to maintain, are incredibly time-consuming to manage, and simply didn’t deliver consistent and actionable results.
Additionally, as a company grows, it gains access to different networks and tiers of specialty contractors, which can come with new risks. A solution like Highwire provides a streamlined approach to assessing subcontractor risk that lets teams manage a large amount of safety data by centralizing metrics in one location. The efficiency a solution like Highwire provides is critical to companies like Rosendin as they experience growth, expand into new geographical areas, and form new relationships with subcontractors.
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Easy Data Collection and Sharing. Successful projects require ongoing, data-driven, two-way risk management conversations between contractors and subcontractors. A platform like Highwire lets teams share safety objectives and key performance metrics with subcontractors, safety personnel, and executives, creating a culture of communication and collaboration. Those conversations take place not just before construction but during and throughout the life of a project.
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An All-In-One Solution. Highwire combines contractor assessments, safety inspections, and incident tracking in one platform. Combining assessment results with aggregated inspection and incident data for each subcontractor provides a more complete picture of risk that supports even better decision-making on future projects.
Rosendin and W. L. French emphasized that Highwire not only lets them understand the risk their contractors present but also helps them evaluate their organization’s performance. The data collected by Rosendin and W.L. French supports important internal and external conversations that drive continuous improvement and deliver contractor success.
To download a recording of the “From Contractor to Client: Rosendin & W. L. French Excavating Corporation” webinar, click here.
