You were recently promoted from plant electrical engineer to plant engineer, after relocating here from halfway across the country six months ago. Your predecessor hired a firm to do a series of equipment moves. These have to be completed by specific dates due to corporate commitments.

The problem is this contractor treats safety as an afterthought. All of your direct reports have been complaining about unsafe acts from the contractor’s workers and unsafe conditions they have created. Your boss, the plant manager, spotted some safety concerns while out in the plant and asked you to get things under control.

You have spoken with the contractor’s site supervisor three times, and he just seems to make excuses. Instead of telling you how he’s solving whatever problem, he gives some excuse as if the problem couldn’t have been avoided. The last time, for example, his crew strung cords across a walkway in front of a fire exit. When you pointed this out, he said they didn’t have enough cords to go around the other way.

You don’t really know anyone at the firm your predecessor hired. Should you contact them anyhow? Absolutely.

Let them know that even though the company has a tight deadline for project completion, the safety of its employees comes first. Since your boss commented on the problem already, you could legitimately claim you’re now under pressure from higher up to get the safety problems under control. But there’s no need to do that. Safety doesn’t need justification, and you (as the primary contact) do not need to justify to the contractor what you want done.

Begin by stating you will summarize the problems and that you will ask for a plan or solution. Then summarize and give a couple of examples. The summary needs to focus on the fact you brought the problems to the attention of the site supervisor and got no resolution. And, in fact, he tries to justify and excuse the problems rather than fix them.

The site supervisor clearly believes work involves playing the blame game instead of accepting responsibility and responding appropriately. If your management contact at the contracting company takes the same defensive attitude, ask to speak to his boss.

A good firm will take immediate action, which may include assigning a new supervisor to the site if they have someone available. Or it may include frequent visits from the project manager or a sales engineer until things are sufficiently corrected to your satisfaction.

What if the firm doesn’t act swiftly and decisively? Then you must act swiftly and decisively. Go to your boss to discuss what to do. You could, for example, hire an outside safety expert to come in and ensure the contractor works safely. But there are two problems with this. One, it’s an additional expense that probably won’t get the intended results. Two, their sloppiness toward safety is a sign of technical sloppiness as well.

That second reason is your justification for replacing this contractor with another one. They may be getting specific steps completed on time, but you can bet their work contains plenty of “Easter eggs.” These are hidden forms of damage that, once the equipment is running, reveal themselves in the form of unscheduled downtime. There is no way the company will meet its corporate commitments if the current sloppiness is “baked in” by this contractor.

Those who disregard safety for the sake of efficiency are neither safe nor efficient. Safety and efficiency both result from working methodically and responsibly. Look for this mindset in a contractor; all of the good ones have it.