Compliance by design: accountability isn’t outsourced

Recent Article by Will Metcalfe. Chief Operations Officer. As featured in January & February PFM Magazine

In outsourced facilities services, delivery can be delegated, but accountability cannot. When health, safety and environmental responsibilities sit across complex supply chains, the challenge for facilities leaders is not defining standards, but retaining control over how consistently they are applied across sites, contracts and operating conditions.

Across large, multi-site estates, compliance failures rarely stem from missing policy. More often, they emerge when governance weakens as services mobilise and operational pressure increases. Analysis by the UK Health and Safety Executive continues to identify inadequate contractor management and weak supervision as recurring contributors to serious incidents, particularly within technical and maintenance activities.

This makes compliance a design issue, not an assurance afterthought. Control must be embedded from the earliest stages of procurement and mobilisation. Selecting partners with demonstrable technical competence, mature management systems aligned to standards such as ISO 45001 and ISO 14001, and the ability to provide timely operational data establishes far stronger control than reliance on retrospective audit alone.

Audit still has a critical role, but its impact depends on application. Scheduled audits and document reviews provide baseline assurance, yet they rarely surface emerging risk. Greater value comes from targeted site inspections, task-based reviews and direct engagement with operational teams. Observing work as it is carried out, under real time, access and performance constraints, offers a more accurate view of operational risk than procedural compliance on paper.

Clear performance frameworks reinforce this approach. Defined standards, meaningful indicators and structured reporting create objective accountability and enable proportionate escalation before issues affect people or service continuity. Increasingly, this is strengthened through real-time insight, near-miss intelligence and trend analysis, enabling earlier intervention.

In this environment, compliance is not bureaucracy. HSE evidence consistently links effective supervision, embedded operational control and real-time insight with reduced incident risk and improved reliability across outsourced facilities services.