Proposing an Index to Determine the Contract Level at the Pre-Contract Stage from the Viewpoint of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE)

The level of contractor’s HSE is a major concern in outsourcing of the works for large organizations. In each tender a rational level of HSE holding by the contractors is recommended to reduce the project costs. By investigating the classification procedure of the contracts available in reliable manuals and models at international level, 6 main criteria were selected for determining the contract level from the viewpoint of HSE. Also, an indicator, called "contract separation" was proposed by weighting the criteria. Initial weight of the main criteria along with their scoring in this indicator was determined by applying sub-criteria characteristics, namely "specialized workforce", "man-day required for meeting the criteria", "required technology", and "impact of criterion on planning the next steps of the contract". Then, by preparing a questionnaire and applying the experts' opinion, the final weight of the criteria was specified, based on which all the contracts of Shahid Tondgouyan Oil Refinery Company in Tehran were divided into four levels, namely (1) advanced, (2) moderate, (3) basic, and (4) exempted from the initial HSE assessment. Results of the present study showed that the operational risk level had the highest impact percentage on determining the level of contract compared with other criteria, which indicates that regardless of other criteria, in case the level of contract risk is high, some special HSE measures should be planned for that contract according to the advanced contracts. Also, cost of the contract had the lowest weight; although cost of the contract is one of the most effective criteria in the contract classification, it cannot by itself represent the magnitude of the contract from the HSE perspective and its impact must be considered along with other criteria associated with HSE in order to determine the contract level.