What this is
What is a contractor incident record?
What is a contractor incident record?
It is the host organisation's own record of an event involving a contractor worker on its site or its work, covering what happened, the conditions that surrounded it, and what both parties did next. It exists alongside the contractor's internal report rather than in place of it, because the two documents answer different questions. The contractor's report examines their worker and their method; this one examines the workplace, the plant and the arrangements the host controlled.
Who investigates an incident involving a contractor?
Both employers, together where possible. The contractor owes a duty to their own worker; the host owes one to people who are not its employees but are affected by its undertaking. A joint investigation is the only arrangement that puts the person who knows the task alongside the person who knows the site, and the only one that fixes a single agreed account of the facts before both organisations start protecting their positions.
Does a contractor injury go on our injury log or theirs?
Recording and investigating are separate questions. Under United States recordkeeping the case belongs on the log of the employer that supervised the worker day to day, which for labour supplied to your supervision is you and for a self-directed specialist crew is them. That answer settles neither investigation nor notification: the host can carry its own notification duty for the same event, and in several jurisdictions both employers can be prosecuted for it.
Scope
When is a contractor incident record required?
This record is for events, not for rule breaches, trends or decisions. Its neighbours in KnowContractor exist because each of those needs a different trail, and using the incident case for all of them makes the incident data unreadable.
Use this template when
- A person working for a contractor or their subcontractor is injured, made ill or exposed while on your site or on your work
- A contractor's activity caused harm to your own people, or damage to your plant, product or environment
- An event on contractor work carried the potential for serious harm, whether or not anyone was hurt and whether or not their report is coming
- The contractor's own report has arrived and the host's contribution still has to be examined, tested and recorded
- Facts need fixing before either party relies on them, because a notification, a claim or a client enquiry is likely
Do not use it for
- A rule breach with no harm and no realistic potential for it, which belongs in Contractor Safety Violation Record where the repeat-offence trail lives
- A no-harm event or unsafe condition raised by the crew, which belongs in Contractor Near Miss Report so reporting is not suppressed by the weight of a full case
- The causal analysis itself, which belongs in the root cause analysis record this case feeds rather than in a narrative box
- A pattern of poor performance over a period, which belongs in Contractor Performance Scorecard; one case is an event, and scoring a vendor from it is indefensible
- The decision to stop the contractor working, which belongs in Contractor Suspension Record; this case is evidence for that decision, not the decision
Compliance mapping
Which ISO 45001 cl.10.2 requirements does this satisfy?
Contractor incidents sit under two regimes at once: the host's duty to people who are not its employees, and the recordkeeping rules deciding which employer owns the case. Regulators treat control of the workplace, not the payroll, as decisive for the first, and day-to-day supervision as the test for the second.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 45001 cl.10.2 | Incidents reacted to, investigated in a timely way with causes determined, corrective action taken and its effectiveness reviewed | Investigation |
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Coordination of procurement processes with contractors, including hazards arising from contractor activities and from the organisation's activities affecting contractors | Context |
| ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2.1 | Hazard identification to consider past incidents and hazards arising from people in the workplace who are not employees | Context |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.2 | Competence of workers determined and evidenced, including workers under the organisation's control | Context |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.4 | Internal and external communication of relevant OH&S information, including to contractors and visitors | Investigation |
| OSHA 29 CFR 1904.7 | General recording criteria: death, days away, restricted work or transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness | What happened |
| OSHA 29 CFR 1904.31 | Cases recorded by the employer that supervised the worker on a day-to-day basis, not necessarily the employer that pays them | Investigation |
What it does not cover
- Root cause analysis, which is where the causal reasoning belongs; this case captures what happened, when, and under what conditions, and hands the analysis to a record built for it.
- Statutory notification, which is a separate act with its own clock and its own form; ticking a reportability field does not notify anyone, and the host's clock does not pause for the contractor's report.
- The injury and illness log, whether an OSHA 300 log or a national accident register, which must carry the case on the correct employer's record with the correct classification.
- Contractor Safety Violation Record, which carries the rule-breach and repeat-offence trail that an incident case is a poor substitute for.
- Contractor Suspension Record, which is the formal decision to stop a contractor working; this case supplies evidence for that decision but confers no authority to make it.
Global
Contractor Incident Record requirements by country
Nowhere treats a contractor injury as purely the contractor's problem. What differs is which employer records it, which must notify, and how explicitly the law names the duty to cooperate between employers sharing a workplace.
OSH Act 5(a)(1); 29 CFR 1904.31 and 1904.39; Multi-Employer Citation Policy CPL 02-00-124
Recording follows day-to-day supervision; citation follows control of the hazard.
A host can be cited as the controlling or creating employer even though the case sits on the contractor's log, so recordkeeping answers about ownership are no defence.
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3; RIDDOR 2013
Duty to persons other than employees affected by the undertaking; the responsible person for reporting depends on control of the premises and the status of the injured person.
For a self-employed person or agency worker on your premises the host can be the responsible person for notification, so assuming the contractor will report it is a common way to miss a deadline.
Framework Directive 89/391/EEC, Articles 6(4) and 9
Employers sharing a workplace must cooperate and coordinate on protection and prevention; lists and reports of occupational accidents must be kept.
Coordination is an explicit legal duty rather than good manners, so an investigation that never involved the other employer reads as a documented gap in the shared-workplace arrangements.
Provincial OHS statutes; Ontario OHSA s.51 notice of accidents
The employer or constructor with control notifies, with joint health and safety committee and worker representative involvement in the investigation.
Notification clocks run in hours and committee participation is a legal entitlement, so a host that waits for the contractor's account will miss both.
Model WHS Act ss.19, 38 and 46
Primary duty extends to workers whose activities the business influences or directs; notifiable incidents reported immediately; duty holders must consult, cooperate and coordinate.
Concurrent duties are written into the Act, so host and contractor can both be prosecuted for the same event and neither one's compliance discharges the other's.
ISO 45001 cl.10.2 with cl.8.1.4.2
Incidents investigated with causes determined and effectiveness of action reviewed, within a system that coordinates with contractors.
Certification auditors sample contractor incidents deliberately, because that is where organisations habitually draw the boundary of the management system too tightly.
How to complete it
How to complete a contractor incident record, step by step
The fields fill in easily enough. What decides whether the record survives an inspector, an insurer or a coroner is four judgements the form prompts for but cannot make for you.
The Investigation Required field is set by potential outcome, and that instruction is the most important sentence on the form. A worker who fell two metres onto stacked pallets and walked away produced a first aid case and a fatality risk, and grading the case on the bruise guarantees that the next one is investigated properly and too late. Record actual and potential severity separately so the scorecard cannot flatter a serious event into a minor one.
Whether your equipment was involved, whether your workers were involved, and whether your site conditions contributed are the questions the contractor will never answer for you. Answer them from observation on the day, with a sentence of justification for each, and have someone other than the contract owner test the answers. A row of unexplained No entries against those three fields is what a defensive host produces, and investigators know it.
The delay in minutes is not a complaint about the contractor's manners. It measures whether your induction, contract and supervisors actually established that the host is told at the time. A four-hour delay means the scene was cleared, the crew dispersed and the account assembled from memory, so record it honestly and let it drive the credibility judgement on the rest of the case.
Decide which employer records the case on the basis of who supervised the work day to day, then decide the host's own notification duty independently of the contractor's. Both fields on this record exist because the answers genuinely differ, and both clocks run from the event rather than from the arrival of their report. Where the answer is unclear, notify and record, and note the reasoning on the case; the reverse mistake has no remedy.
What auditors find
Most common contractor incident record findings
Contractor incident records usually exist. What inspectors find is that they carry the contractor's version, close on the contractor's action, and leave the conditions the host controlled unexamined.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Only the contractor's report is on file; the host carried out no investigation of its own. | ISO 45001 cl.10.2 | Hold a joint investigation and record the host's findings on the case itself, not as an annotation to theirs. |
| Delay between the event and the host being told is unrecorded, or recorded and never questioned. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Capture the delay in minutes on every case and set the reporting expectation at induction and in the contract. |
| Investigation level set by the injury sustained rather than by the credible worst outcome. | ISO 45001 cl.10.2 | Grade on potential severity and hold actual and potential as two separate entries on the record. |
| Area cleared and work resumed before anyone with authority to hold the scene attended. | ISO 45001 cl.10.2 | Give the host's supervisor standing authority to hold the area, and record what preservation was achieved. |
| Host contribution questions answered No with no evidence: equipment, own workers, site conditions. | ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2.1 | Require a justifying sentence for each No, verified by someone other than the contract owner. |
| Permit recorded as in place but no permit reference exists, or the permit was live and out of scope. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Link the permit ID and confirm it was current and correctly scoped at the time of the event. |
| Competency for the task recorded as verified on the contractor's assurance rather than a verification record. | ISO 45001 cl.7.2 | Point the answer at the competency verification record for that named worker and reject bare assertions. |
| Case appears on no injury log, each employer assuming the other holds it. | OSHA 29 CFR 1904.31 | Settle day-to-day supervision at the point of the case and name the employer that records it. |
| Notification decision left blank or deferred until the contractor's report arrives. | OSHA 29 CFR 1904.39 | Assess the host's reportability on the day against its own clock, independently of the contractor. |
| Contractor hours and contractor injuries excluded from the site's safety statistics. | ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Bring contractor exposure into the denominator and their cases into the numerator, reporting both split out. |
Case in point
Case in point: the isolation that was somebody else's
A chilled foods site engaged a refrigeration contractor to change a suction valve in the plant room during a Sunday shutdown. The site's shift engineer isolated and drained the line, signed the permit, and went off shift at two. The contractor's fitter broke the joint at four and took a face full of residual oil and ammonia. He was decontaminated on site, taken to hospital, discharged that evening and back at work on the Tuesday.
The contractor's report arrived eleven days later. It concluded that the fitter had not verified isolation at the point of work, recommended a toolbox talk, and closed. The site accepted it, filed the case against the vendor, and marked medical treatment as hospital with no time away. Nobody recorded that the permit had stayed live with no site issuer on the premises, that the drain point served two circuits and was labelled for one, or that the contract owner was told three hours and ten minutes later because the crew rang their own supervisor first.
Fourteen months later a different contractor's fitter opened the same drain point and got the same result, this time with an eye injury and eight days away. The second investigation found the mislabelled drain in ninety minutes. The first case had not been wrong about the fitter. It had simply never asked about anything the host owned, and because the finding sat against a vendor rather than against the site's isolation process, there was nothing for the second contractor to inherit.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
4 sections
- Reference
- CON-016
- Archetype
- Record
- Record ID
- CASE-2026-000
- Scoring
- Actual and potential severity
- Direction
- High is bad
- Singleton
- No
- Basis
- ISO 45001 cl.10.2
- Links
- Links Vendor, Worker; feeds RCA
- Tags
- Contractor, Incident
- Sections
- 4
- Fields
- 53
- Follow up fields
- 5
- Repeating sections
- 0
- Links out
- 5
Header
14 fieldsCase ID*
Auto sequence. Format CASE-2026-00000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
Drives who this goes to next.
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Date and Time*
Completed By*
Site*
Site ID*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Contractor*
Vendor ID*
Format VEN-0000.
Links to FDN-005 Vendor ID
Area
The area within the site.
Exact Location
Drop a pin for anything hard to find.
Their Worker, Our Site, Our Investigation Too
A contractor injured here is your incident as well as theirs. Investigate jointly, because their report will not examine the conditions you created.
Injured Person Name
Employer*
Incident Type*
What happened
10 fieldsTime Of Incident*
Time Reported To Us*
Delay In Reporting Minutes*
Contractors sometimes report internally first and to you much later. Set the expectation at induction.
Description*
Severity*
- Minor3 pts
- Moderate1 pt
- Serious0 pts
Medical Treatment Required*
- None3 pts
- First aid2 pts
- Medical treatment1 pt
- Hospital0 pts
Time Away From Work*
- None3 pts
- Under a week2 pts
- Over a week0 pts
Photograph
Scene Preserved*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Our First Aid Provided
- Yes3 pts
- Not needed3 pts
- No0 pts
Context
9 fieldsPermit In Place*
- Yes3 pts
- Not required3 pts
- No0 pts
Permit ID
Links to SAF-048 Permit ID
Method Statement Being Followed*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Correct PPE Worn*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Competency Verified For This Task*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Supervisor Present*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Our Equipment Involved*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Our Workers Involved*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Our Site Conditions Contributed*
- No3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- Yes0 pts
Investigation
20 fieldsJoint Investigation Held*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Their Report Received*
- Yes3 pts
- Late1 pt
- No0 pts
Report Quality
- Clear and evidenced3 pts
- Adequate2 pts
- Poor0 pts
Investigation Required*
Set by potential outcome, not by what actually happened.
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Investigation Level
RCA ID
Format RCA-2026-00000.
Links to FDN-013 RCA ID
Reportable By Us*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Reportable By Them*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Regulator Notified
Others At Similar Risk*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Shared With Other Contractors*
Other contractors doing similar work here need to hear about it.
- Yes3 pts
- Not relevant3 pts
- No0 pts
Shared With Our Workers*
- Yes3 pts
- Not relevant3 pts
- No0 pts
Action Required*
Raise the action record, then enter its reference here.
- No2 pts
- Yes0 pts
Priority
- High0 pts
- Medium1 pt
- Low3 pts
CAPA ID
Format CAPA-2026-00000.
Links to FDN-014 CAPA ID
Action Owner
Contract Owner*
Signature*
Safety Lead*
Second Signature*
CON-016 · record IDs look like CASE-2026-000 · Links Vendor, Worker; feeds RCA
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
The form is not what fails. What fails is the three hours before anyone tells the host, the contribution question nobody tested, the action owned by a crew that has demobilised, and the finding that stayed with the vendor instead of reaching the asset.
Holds the case against the vendor and worker registers, opens it the moment the site is told, and forces the joint investigation fields before it will close.
Brings contractor cases into the same incident population as your own, so grading, statistics and corrective action run through one process.
Ties the case to the asset, permit and isolation involved, so a host contribution lands on the equipment record and not just the contract file.
Watches the pattern a single case hides: repeat areas, repeat permits, lengthening reporting delays, actions still open after the crew has left.
This template lives in KnowContractor — contractor management. Prequalification, approval, induction, permits and performance.
Meet KnowContractor→Glossary
Contractor Incident Record definitions and key terms
- Multi-employer worksite
- A workplace where workers of more than one employer are present, which in most regimes triggers explicit duties to cooperate, coordinate and share hazard information.
- Controlling employer
- The employer with general supervisory authority over the worksite, including power to correct hazards, which in US enforcement can be cited for another employer's exposed workers.
- Day-to-day supervision
- The recordkeeping test for which employer logs a case: whoever directs the worker's daily activities, regardless of who issues the pay.
- Recordable case
- An event meeting the general recording criteria, typically death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness.
- Notifiable incident
- An event that must be reported to a regulator within a stated period, defined by outcome or by dangerous occurrence type rather than by the host's judgement of seriousness.
- Potential severity
- The credible worst outcome of the same event under slightly different circumstances, used to set investigation depth so that grading does not follow luck.
- Scene preservation
- Holding the area, plant state, tools and materials as found until the joint investigation has seen them, which is the shortest-lived evidence in any contractor case.
- Joint investigation
- A single investigation conducted by host and contractor together, producing one agreed account of the facts before each organisation forms its own conclusions.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about contractor incident record
Do we have to investigate if the contractor is already investigating?+
Yes, and not as a formality. Their investigation is scoped to their worker and their method, and yours is scoped to the workplace, plant and arrangements you controlled. Under ISO 45001 cl.10.2 the incident is inside your management system, and in most jurisdictions your duty to non-employees is not discharged by another employer's diligence. Do it jointly where you can, but do it.
Should a contractor injury count in our safety statistics?+
Yes, and split out. Excluding contractor cases produces a rate describing only the population you employ, which on a shutdown can be a minority of the people on site. Report the combined figure with contractor hours in the denominator, and the two populations separately, because the interventions differ.
What if the contractor refuses to share their report?+
Record that, score the gap, and proceed on your own evidence. The fields for whether their report was received and what its quality was exist because both are performance facts about the contractor, and both belong on the scorecard and in the next award decision. If sharing was a contract condition, the refusal is a breach and a suspension trigger, not a filing problem.
How quickly should the host be told?+
Immediately, and the expectation has to be set at induction and in the contract because the default behaviour is otherwise. Contractor crews report to their own supervisor first, which is natural and which destroys the scene, the witnesses and the plant state before you know an event has occurred. Measure the delay on every case and treat a pattern of long delays as a finding about your arrangements.
Does this record satisfy our regulatory notification?+
No. The reportability fields record a decision; the notification is a separate submission on a separate clock, and the host's clock runs from the event and not from the arrival of the contractor's report. Where it is unclear whether the host or the contractor is the responsible person, notify anyway and note the reasoning on the case.
Can one contractor incident justify suspending the contractor?+
Sometimes, but not from this record alone. A single event with imminent danger or a serious deliberate breach can justify immediate suspension, and there this case is the evidence while the suspension record is the decision. What one incident does not support is a performance judgement across a contract, which needs the scorecard and audit trail behind it.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Contractor Onboarding and Management
Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire
Collects a contractor's safety, insurance, training and performance information before they are approved
Contractor Safety Statistics Review
Reviews a contractor's injury rates, citations and experience modifier over recent years
Contractor Risk Classification
Classifies a contractor by the risk of the work they do, from low risk services to high risk construction
Contractor Approval Record
Records the decision to approve a contractor to work on site
Contractor Safety Program Review
Reviews the contractor's own written safety programme against your requirements
Subcontractor Declaration
Records any subcontractors a contractor intends to use
More in Performance
Contractor Performance Scorecard
Scores a contractor on safety, quality, schedule and cooperation over a period
Contractor Safety Violation Record
Records a breach of your safety rules by a contractor
Contractor Toolbox Talk Record
Records safety talks the contractor delivers to their own crew on your site
Contractor Work Completion Record
Confirms contractor work is finished, the area is clean and safe, and any permits are closed
Contractor Review Meeting Record
Records a periodic review meeting with a contractor covering performance, issues and improvements
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- ISO 45001:2018 clauses 10.2, 8.1.4.2, 6.1.2.1, 7.2 and 7.4
- OSHA 29 CFR Part 1904, in particular 1904.7, 1904.31 and 1904.39, with Multi-Employer Citation Policy CPL 02-00-124 (US)
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, s.3 (GB)
- Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (GB)
- Framework Directive 89/391/EEC, Arts.6(4) and 9
- Model WHS Act ss.19, 38 and 46 (Australia)
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.