Sole traders

Your name must be inserted here. As the employer fie sole trader, senior partner or managing director) you have overall responsibility for health and safety. 

The context for this book is large UK construction sites (over 15 million in value) operated by large main contractors (found within the top 30 contractors in terms of annual work won by value in the UK), rather than those operated by small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) or micro operations and sole traders. However, smaller industry organisations inevitably participate in work on large sites as they operate as subcontractors within industry supply chains. Research has shown that subcontractors take their ideas of safety with them when they move from project to project (Aboagye-Nimo eta/. 2012), and therefore SMEs and even micro-SMEs play a considerable part in helping to create and perpetuate what safety is on large construction sites. 

The Safe Place, Safe Person, Safe Systems framework was originally thought to provide a level of customisation to individual organisations by eliminating elements that were not considered relevant. However, this was not observed in the case studies examined. From the experiences encoimtered, it is suggested that this level of customisation would only be apphcahle in the smallest organisations, for example, sole traders. 

Whereas the sole traders, partnerships and purely self-employed are not required to insure under Workcover, in reality a large proportion, perhaps the largest, of Victorian business establishments presently registered with Workcover are 1 - 2 people, self-employed, partnerships or family operations, who have been advised to incorporate. 

This publication was made possible by a grant from the Qatar National Research Fund trader its National Priorities Research Program award number NPRP-08-670-1-124. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Qatar National Research Fund. 

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