Multiple-employer workplace: the designation comes before the document

The first question on a Canadian shared site is not “what document do we need”. It is who holds the duty.

British Columbia, Workers Compensation Act s. 24(1):

The prime contractor of a multiple-employer workplace must

(a) ensure that the activities of employers, workers and other persons at the workplace relating to occupational health and safety are coordinated, and

(b) do everything that is reasonably practicable to establish and maintain a system or process that will ensure compliance with the OHS provisions and the regulations in respect of the workplace.

And the default that catches people: a prime contractor is the party that enters into a written agreement with the owner to take that role — and where there is no such agreement, the owner of the workplace is the prime contractor. Silence is a designation. Not signing anything does not leave the duty unallocated; it allocates it to the owner.

That is why section 1 of the plan asks, in as many words, whether a written agreement exists.

Three duties in three directions

BC’s Part 2 does something the European instruments do not: it splits the shared-site problem across three parties, each with its own sentence.

The prime contractor coordinates, and establishes and maintains a system ensuring compliance (s. 24(1)). The second verb is the one that gets dropped: a pre-start meeting is establishing, not maintaining.

Each employer must give the prime contractor “the name of the person the employer has designated to supervise the employer’s workers at that workplace” (s. 24(2)). A named person, not a company. Section 1 of the plan has a field for exactly that, because in practice this is the duty most often satisfied by an email nobody can find.

The owner must give the employer or prime contractor “the information known to the owner that is necessary to identify and eliminate or control hazards to the health or safety of persons at the workplace” (s. 25(b)). This is the Canadian equivalent of France’s inspection commune préalable duty to hand over what only the site knows — the buried service, the line that is still live, the roof that will not take a load. It is an information duty, and the practical way to discharge it is to walk the site together.

Ontario: the constructor, and the notice of project

On an Ontario project the concept is different again. Section 23(1):

A constructor shall ensure, on a project undertaken by the constructor that,

(a) the measures and procedures prescribed by this Act and the regulations are carried out on the project;

(b) every employer and every worker performing work on the project complies with this Act and the regulations; and

(c) the health and safety of workers on the project is protected.

Note (b): the constructor’s duty runs to every employer and every worker on the project, not only its own. That is a broader duty than BC’s coordination duty, and it is the reason “who is the constructor” is a question with financial consequences before it is a question with safety consequences.

And s. 23(2): where prescribed, the constructor must give a Director notice in writing of the project before commencing any work. The plan has a field for whether that has been done, because it is a pre-start step that is easy to discover late.

What no Canadian jurisdiction imposes

A document. There is no Canadian equivalent of France’s plan de prévention or Italy’s DUVRI: no prescribed shared-site form, and no numeric threshold that turns an oral arrangement into a written one.

Which means the plan below is practice, and it says so on every section that is not a statutory duty. It exists because the duties above cannot honestly be discharged without one — you cannot coordinate what nobody wrote down, and you cannot show an officer a system you maintained only in conversation.

Worth knowing if you work for a European group: France imposes a written plan as soon as the work reaches 400 foreseeable hours over twelve months or less, subcontractors included, or for any work on a ministerial list of dangerous works whatever its duration. Italy imposes the DUVRI but exempts work under five man-days — unless it involves confined spaces, carcinogens, asbestos, high fire risk or explosive atmospheres. Neither threshold exists here, and neither travels.

The column whose absence explains most failures

Section 4 of the plan is the core: a table of the hazards created by working alongside each other, with the control decided for each. And a column that almost no contractor pack carries: “owned by”.

That column is the reason the document exists. A control agreed jointly and assigned to nobody is a control each company believes the other is doing. The barricade that was not put up, the lockout that was not applied, the spotter who was not posted: in multiple-employer incident reviews this is the dominant pattern, and it is invisible on a plan without the column.

Two clarifications about that table, because both are commonly got wrong:

• It is not about each employer’s own hazards. Each handles those in its own hazard assessment. A plan that copies “fall from height” and “electrical hazard” without saying what the overlap changes has not done its job.
• Interface hazards are usually mundane. A storage area blocking an exit route. Mobile equipment crossing a work zone. A shutdown that was not announced. A forklift passing under an elevating work platform. Those are the useful lines.

While the work runs

Coordination is a continuing duty in BC — “establish and maintain” — and a continuing practical problem everywhere. Three things carry it:

One named contact each way, which section 1 records. A regular coordination meeting with a written record, which is the cheapest evidence of maintenance that exists. And bringing new employers into the plan before they arrive, which is where sites fail: a subcontractor added on week three has not been on the joint walk and does not know which line is live.

Section 6 is therefore a change table with a “fresh joint walk?” column. Nothing requires it. Without it, a plan signed in January describes a job that stopped existing in March.

What this plan is not

• Not a prescribed form. No Canadian jurisdiction has one for this.
• Not the designation. Signing this plan does not make anybody the prime contractor; a written agreement with the owner does, and its absence makes the owner one.
• Not a transfer of duty. Each employer keeps responsibility for the health and safety of its own workers whatever the prime contractor coordinates. The plan says so above the signature.
• Not the construction-project regime in full. Notices of project, pre-start health and safety reviews, and the project-specific requirements of the construction regulation are separate obligations.
• Not the hazard-specific permits. Hot work, lockout, confined space entry, excavation: each has its own permit and its own procedure, and this plan should reference them rather than replace them.
• Not legal advice, and not a statement of the Alberta, Quebec or federal regimes, which allocate coordination duties in their own terms. A duty guessed from a neighbouring province is worse than none.

How to use it

1. Answer the designation question first (sections 1 and 2). Is there a written agreement? If not, in BC the owner is the prime contractor — including, sometimes, when the owner did not intend to be.
2. Collect the supervisor names each employer must give the prime contractor. One field, and a duty discharged.
3. Check whether a notice of project is required in Ontario, and whether it has been given.
4. Walk the site together before work starts (section 3), and use it to discharge the owner’s information duty under s. 25(b).
5. Fill in the interface table on site, and complete the “owned by” column on every line.
6. Hold the coordination meeting and write it down. That record is what “maintain” looks like.
7. Reopen the plan whenever the work changes, and note it in section 6.
8. Both parties sign. More than one employer, more than one signature.

And keep it after the work finishes. The question that arrives a year later is never “did you have a plan” — it is “who was supposed to put up the barricade”.