Principal Contractor Compliance: A Checklist for Every Project

As the principal contractor, you carry responsibility not only for your own Health & Safety compliance, but for ensuring every subcontractor on site is operating within a compatible, compliant system. Here's a practical checklist for managing that responsibility across a project.

Request and review each subcontractor's Health & Safety File or relevant extract, confirm their risk assessments and method statements align with your site's baseline risk assessment, and verify that their legal appointees are named and competent for the scope of work.

Include subcontractor activities in your site inductions and toolbox talks, conduct regular inspections that cover all trades currently active on site, and ensure incidents involving any contractor are recorded in the project's central incident register.

Maintain a central register of all subcontractors, their scope, and the status of their H&S documentation. This register is often one of the first things requested during a client or Department of Labour audit, and having it up to date significantly reduces audit stress.

We support principal contractors with portfolio-level oversight — reviewing subcontractor documentation, conducting site-wide audits across all trades, and providing onsite officers who manage this coordination on a day-to-day basis.