Subcontractor Safety Plan Review Checklist (for GCs)
Before a sub starts work, check their safety plan is written for your project (correct project name, address, and GC), covers the actual scope and its hazards, orders controls with PPE as the last resort, includes emergency and rescue procedures matching the exposures, names competent persons where the work requires one, lists crew training, and is signed and dated by the people doing the work. A plan that could describe any jobsite is the red flag that predicts the rest.
The 10-point review
- ✓ 1. Project match: your project name, the site address, and your company named as GC. Another builder's name or a stale date means the plan is recycled.
- ✓ 2. Scope match: the described work matches the subcontract. A drywall sub submitting a plan that talks about roofing did not write it for this job.
- ✓ 3. Hazards of the actual work: the plan identifies the hazards of their trade on your site, including the conditions of your project such as occupied areas, traffic, other trades overhead, or excavation nearby.
- ✓ 4. Controls in the right order: elimination, engineering, and administrative controls before personal protective equipment. A plan where PPE is the answer to everything has the hierarchy backwards.
- ✓ 5. Emergency and rescue: procedures that match the exposures, such as rescue from height where crews tie off, not just an instruction to call 911.
- ✓ 6. Competent person: named, with what they are competent for, where the work requires one, such as excavation, scaffolds, or fall protection.
- ✓ 7. Training and certifications: the plan lists what the crew holds, and it matches the work, including operator certifications and any required medicals.
- ✓ 8. Language of the crew: if the crew is Spanish-speaking, ask how the plan and the daily briefings reach them in Spanish. A document the crew cannot read protects no one.
- ✓ 9. Signatures and dates: the workers performing the work signed onto the plan, dated on or after the plan itself.
- ✓ 10. Consistency: the JHA, the safety plan, and the toolbox talks tell the same story. Contradictions between documents mean nobody read them.
Red flags that mean send it back
- ✓ Placeholder text left in the document ("[Company Name]", "[Site]")
- ✓ "All work will be performed safely" and similar filler instead of a method
- ✓ Identical hazards and controls copied for every task
- ✓ No site address, or a different state's requirements cited
- ✓ A signature page dated before the plan was written, or unsigned
Why the GC review matters
On a multi-employer worksite, OSHA can look at the controlling employer as well as the sub that created the hazard. Reviewing each trade's plan before mobilization is how a GC demonstrates it exercised reasonable care over the site it controls, and it is exactly what insurance auditors and prequalification reviews ask to see. A ten-minute review against this checklist costs less than one stopped work day.
The efficient version of this process is to send the checklist to subs before mobilization so the plan arrives right the first time. When a sub needs a compliant site-specific plan quickly, a verified document service can produce one in minutes, which beats a week of rejection cycles for everyone on the schedule.
Common questions
▸Can a GC reject a subcontractor's safety plan?
Yes, and it should when the plan does not cover the actual work on the actual site. Tell the sub specifically which items failed so it comes back right in one cycle rather than three.
▸Is the GC responsible for a sub's safety plan?
The sub is responsible for its own plan and its own crew. But on a multi-employer worksite the controlling employer has duties for the site it controls, and accepting a plainly generic plan without comment is hard to defend after an incident.
▸Should the GC keep copies of sub safety plans?
Yes. Keep every trade's plan with the project records for the life of the job, and longer where an incident occurred. It is routine evidence in insurance audits and prequalification reviews.
▸What if the sub cannot produce a decent plan?
Point them at a fast way to get one rather than letting the schedule slip: a verified generated plan is site-specific out of the box, costs less than an hour of anyone's time, and arrives the same day.
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