Fourteen Confirmed Engineers, and Nobody on Site

On a European deployment there is a point where the job looks booked. The rate is agreed. The subcontractor has confirmed the headcount. Say fourteen names sit in an email, each a real person who has said yes and turned other work down. Everyone involved thinks the job is ready.

Then someone asks whether those fourteen people can get through the gate on Monday morning, and the job turns out to be far from ready.

Confirmed means someone has agreed to work. Cleared means they are allowed to.

This is one of the most common ways a cross-border labour programme slips, and it rarely slips for the reason the client expects. Nobody drops out and nobody takes a better offer. The team stays willing and available. They cannot be admitted, and by the time that shows, there are days left to fix it instead of weeks.

These are the gaps, in the order they usually appear.

1. Establish employment status first

Ask a subcontractor whether the team are employees or independent contractors and you will usually get a confident answer. Ask for the evidence and the answer sometimes changes.

It matters. If the team are employees, their employer runs payroll, deducts social contributions, holds employment contracts and carries the employer’s legal duties towards them. If they are independent, each person carries their own registration, contributions and cover, and the documents you need to collect are different.

Most supply agreements are drafted on the assumption of employment. Clause after clause refers to the Supplier’s employees, to payroll and to statutory deductions.

Sign that when the team are independents and you have warranted something untrue about fourteen people you have never met. Nobody reads that warranty until something goes wrong, and then it is the first thing anyone reads.

Settle this in writing before anything else, because every other document depends on the answer.

2. Applied for is not registered

Where the team are engaged as independent contractors, each person needs a live business registration in the country of work. In France that is a SIRET number, and every country has an equivalent.

The trap is the phrase they have applied. Someone who has applied and is waiting is not yet an independent contractor. They are an individual being paid for work with nothing behind them. French law calls that travail dissimulé, and the consequences travel up the contractual chain instead of stopping at whoever paid them.

So the useful question is how many people hold a number today, and which ones. That list, not the headcount, is the team that can start.

3. The attestation that stops you paying someone else’s bill

This one is expensive, and most people only ask for it after being caught once.

Under Article L8222-1 of the French Code du travail, a company contracting with a French supplier for more than €5,000 must obtain that supplier’s attestation de vigilance from URSSAF, and renew it every six months for the life of the contract. It confirms the supplier is up to date with its social contributions.

Skip it, and if the supplier has not paid those contributions, solidarité financière applies: you become jointly liable for them. For a team of fourteen that is a large sum.

The attestation is free to download and is the cheapest protection in the programme.

Collect the registration extract at the same time: a Kbis for a company, or an INSEE avis de situation for a sole trader.

Where anyone in the team is a non-EU national, collect evidence of their right to work or to trade independently. That check carries its own penalties, and they also reach the party that failed to make it.

4. Trained is not authorised

Electrical authorisation catches people out often, for a reason that is easy to miss.

A worker completes the training and receives an attestation from the training body. It looks complete, but it is not. Under NF C 18-510 the training provider issues an opinion.

The employer issues the authorisation, and it is only valid once the employer has signed it. An unsigned titre d’habilitation records that training happened. It does not permit anyone to work.

Know what the levels mean as well. H0, B0 and H0V cover non-electrical work near live installations: working in a room with a panel, not on the panel. For rack and containment installation that is usually the right level. For any electrical work it is not, and the higher levels are a separate authorisation.

Check the signature block. If it is blank, the site’s safety officer will notice.

5. Occupational health takes time

Sites often ask for a medical certificate for every worker. In France that means the visite médicale, which runs through the occupational health service an employer is affiliated to, on booked appointments. It is designed around employees and a calendar.

For a team of fourteen a few days before the start, it will not happen. For anyone engaged as an independent contractor it is not the right route anyway, because there is no employer to arrange it.

The mistake is promising it anyway. Go back to the site and ask what they accept instead. Many will take a fitness declaration signed by the worker against the specific tasks, or a short attestation from a general practitioner, which takes a day. Ask early and in writing, and a blocker becomes a form.

What to do instead

None of this is unusual. All of it can be known in advance, and the problem is that it is rarely asked about until the week of the start.

The pre-mobilisation gate for a European team:

• Employment status settled in writing, per person
• Registration numbers held, as a list of names and numbers
• Attestation de vigilance in hand, dated within six months
• A current registration extract for the supplier
• Right to work or to trade evidenced for any non-EU national
• Electrical authorisation signed by the employer
• The medical requirement agreed with the site in writing, with the accepted alternative named
• Every worker file complete before that person travels

The number that matters on Monday

When a programme is tight, the most useful thing a supplier can tell a contractor is “we have six cleared for Monday and eight behind them”.

Six compliant people through the gate on day one, with the rest joining as their files clear, is a start. Fourteen sent in hope, with most turned back at the barrier, ends the relationship and costs the contractor a morning of programme.

So ask your supplier, well before the start date, how many people are cleared and what they hold for each one. If the answer is a headcount instead of a list of names, ask again.