Multi-Employer Construction Site Coordination Safety

Key Hazards

• One trade creating hazards for workers from another employer
• Conflicting work in the same area or at different elevations
• Unclear responsibility for shared controls and inspections
• Utilities, alarms, or access routes changed without notification
• Hot work, lifting, demolition, or energization affecting nearby crews
• Workers relying on assumptions instead of verified communication

2–3 Minute Talk Script

Multi-Employer Construction Site Coordination Safety requires workers to recognize the task-specific hazards before work begins and to use the controls established for the project.

The controlling contractor and participating employers should define responsibilities, points of contact, work schedules, shared hazards, permits, inspections, access controls, emergency procedures, and methods for communicating changes.

Pre-task coordination should identify overhead and lower-level work, equipment routes, crane picks, energized systems, hot work, excavation, demolition, material deliveries, and occupied areas.

Each employer should communicate hazards created by its work and should understand the hazards, restrictions, and controls established by others in the shared area.

Shared protections such as guardrails, covers, scaffolds, temporary power, fire systems, lighting, barricades, and access routes should have clearly assigned inspection and maintenance responsibility.

Permit-controlled and high-risk work should be scheduled and separated so one operation does not defeat ventilation, fall protection, line clearance, fire prevention, or exclusion zones for another.

Changes should be communicated promptly through meetings, radios, signage, permits, supervisors, and updated plans rather than informal assumptions between individual workers.

Work should stop when employers disagree about control responsibility, simultaneous operations conflict, a shared protection is altered, or affected crews have not been informed of a change.

Safety Reminders

• Identify every employer and supervisor in the area.
• Share hazards before work begins.
• Coordinate overhead, lifting, hot work, and energized tasks.
• Assign responsibility for shared protections.
• Protect access and emergency routes.
• Communicate changes to every affected crew.
• Stop when coordination or responsibility is unclear.

Ask the Crew

• What other employers are working in or above this area?
• What hazards will each crew create?
• Who owns inspection and maintenance of shared controls?
• What simultaneous operations must be separated?
• How will changes be communicated to all affected workers?