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Old 11-05-2013, 12:47 PM
Sigma Sigma is offline
 
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Default Isnetworld vs. Complyworks

I appologize for adding a non recreational thread but I could not find another appropriate forum about the subject and I know there are probably many people on this forum that are more familiar about the subject than I am.

I am interested in the opinions of people on this forum that are knowledgeable in either ISNetworld or Complyworks or both. My questions is "What are the pro's and con's of each company and should we switch from ISNetworld to Complyworks or to another database company".

Some background info:

Since my retirement 6 years ago, I have worked part time as the safety officer for my son in law's small family trucking company (less than 10 employees). The majority of our business is in the oilfield and construction industry. We have been COR certified for about 6 years. At that time the prime contractor which gave us about 50% of our business requested that we use ISNetworld as a safety database which we joined and maintained including the RAV review. We paid the large annual fee and initially answered about 1500 questions in their database them reanswered all the new questions each quarter. This takes a lot of time to complete. Over 6 years no contractors have ever asked if we were a member of ISNetworld and only one asked if we were a member of complyworks. They were only interested in our COR status and of course our prices. The original prime contractor (ISN client) is now only about 0.2% of our business.
We have heard that Complyworks is easier to use and takes a lot less time and is about 1/3 of the annual cost. We have until next spring when our ISNetworld renewal is due to make a decision.
Are there any other options?
We are not interested in getting a 3rd party company to take over our safety program either.

Thanks in advance.
Sig
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Old 11-05-2013, 01:08 PM
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Ice Fishing Maniac Ice Fishing Maniac is offline
 
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Some companies are listed on ISNetworld, some others prefer the COMPLY WORKS.

Its simply a private cash grab IMO.

If you don't have the one they prefer, you need to get set up or you wont be working for them.

I had one outfit that wanted me to be on a new different company list. I said we have the 2 others (ISNetworld / Comply Works), and if you want prefer the new one, then you pay for it and set it up. I'm not wasting anymore time and $$$ b/c you prefer the NEW ONE (I don't recall the name)...just because more than likely your company is part owner in it.

I understand the logistics of this system but for the small guys, it gets costly, JUST to be able to be certified to DO WORK, not nessessarily getting the work on the project!!!
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Old 11-05-2013, 01:09 PM
dumoulin dumoulin is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sigma View Post
I appologize for adding a non recreational thread but I could not find another appropriate forum about the subject and I know there are probably many people on this forum that are more familiar about the subject than I am.

I am interested in the opinions of people on this forum that are knowledgeable in either ISNetworld or Complyworks or both. My questions is "What are the pro's and con's of each company and should we switch from ISNetworld to Complyworks or to another database company".

Some background info:

Since my retirement 6 years ago, I have worked part time as the safety officer for my son in law's small family trucking company (less than 10 employees). The majority of our business is in the oilfield and construction industry. We have been COR certified for about 6 years. At that time the prime contractor which gave us about 50% of our business requested that we use ISNetworld as a safety database which we joined and maintained including the RAV review. We paid the large annual fee and initially answered about 1500 questions in their database them reanswered all the new questions each quarter. This takes a lot of time to complete. Over 6 years no contractors have ever asked if we were a member of ISNetworld and only one asked if we were a member of complyworks. They were only interested in our COR status and of course our prices. The original prime contractor (ISN client) is now only about 0.2% of our business.
We have heard that Complyworks is easier to use and takes a lot less time and is about 1/3 of the annual cost. We have until next spring when our ISNetworld renewal is due to make a decision.
Are there any other options?
We are not interested in getting a 3rd party company to take over our safety program either.

Thanks in advance.
Sig
I totally feel for you....
The program was created in the US and is non-compliant to AB OH&S. It's a money grab; but, company’s still want to use it as some crippled benchmark. The problem is that you have to develop two safety programs: one for OH&S and one for Complyworks or ISN. IMO, those programs should be eradicated completely and allow B-C, AB, SK and MN OH&S (for example) to develop software which would do the same. This way, you wouldn’t have to come up with 2 manuals and thousands of dollars in yearly membership fees.
The reality is that a lot of business can be done regardless and you have to cater to your custom. That said, if ISN is too expensive and not worth the business it attracts, DUMP IT!
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Old 11-05-2013, 02:22 PM
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I would think that if you aren't being asked for either, don't have either one. I agree with the cash grab statements.
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Old 11-05-2013, 05:16 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice Fishing Maniac View Post
Some companies are listed on ISNetworld, some others prefer the COMPLY WORKS.

Its simply a private cash grab IMO.

If you don't have the one they prefer, you need to get set up or you wont be working for them.

I had one outfit that wanted me to be on a new different company list. I said we have the 2 others (ISNetworld / Comply Works), and if you want prefer the new one, then you pay for it and set it up. I'm not wasting anymore time and $$$ b/c you prefer the NEW ONE (I don't recall the name)...just because more than likely your company is part owner in it.

I understand the logistics of this system but for the small guys, it gets costly, JUST to be able to be certified to DO WORK, not nessessarily getting the work on the project!!!

100% agree. I'm in a similar boat.
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Old 11-05-2013, 05:40 PM
Sledhead71 Sledhead71 is offline
 
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I understand your frustration, I have to engage 4 different safety management companies to work for my clients, ISN, Complyworks, PIC's and the ACSA to maintain my COR.

As well I need to maintain my Quality Assurance Program through our governing body and ISO.

Complyworks is by far more user friendly than the other, my PIC's audit was through Skype with a Texan conducting the audit with his piece on the desk.. It was amusing to say the least, easy audit as we talked guns.

Wish you the best, and drop me a PM if you wish.
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Old 11-05-2013, 06:01 PM
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They all are a cash grab.
Never gotten a job for being on any of them.
Only hear when you aren't on them and that is why they can't use you.
I have 2 full time safety guys on and could use a 3rd because of the red tape and the MSAs that everyone wants.

What happened to calling someone because they give good service?
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Old 11-05-2013, 06:13 PM
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hal53 hal53 is offline
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Originally Posted by Mickey View Post
They all are a cash grab.
Never gotten a job for being on any of them.
Only hear when you aren't on them and that is why they can't use you.
I have 2 full time safety guys on and could use a 3rd because of the red tape and the MSAs that everyone wants.

What happened to calling someone because they give good service?
^^^ this we use Comply works, very awkward system to find approved vendors if you are in a different area, luckily I stick close to home and use the same ones, But, boy oh boy, the whole world knows in a Nano-second if there is an issue with your business insurance...they are a cash grabbing joke...
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Old 11-05-2013, 06:37 PM
fajita123 fajita123 is offline
 
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Originally Posted by hal53 View Post
^^^ this we use Comply works, very awkward system to find approved vendors if you are in a different area, luckily I stick close to home and use the same ones, But, boy oh boy, the whole world knows in a Nano-second if there is an issue with your business insurance...they are a cash grabbing joke...
We've recently began requiring all companies have an acceptable grade in ISN. Supply Chain says it's to ensure we aren't exposing the company to additional risk in hiring unsafe contractors (we usually retain prime). It's definitely been an issue with some of the smaller/local contractors we use often getting set up in ISN.
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Old 11-05-2013, 09:47 PM
Eye'ee Eye'ee is offline
 
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We work the oilfield as a service company. We do a bit of work for a lot of different companies. We need isnetworld and complyworks and cor. This costs a lot of time and effort. Then some oil companies use some other verification of our safety record. And some other companies require us to pay for the privilege of being able to invoice them. It seems there are a lot of ways to keep us paying to be able to work.
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Old 11-05-2013, 09:52 PM
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dale7637 dale7637 is offline
 
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We work the oilfield as a service company. We do a bit of work for a lot of different companies. We need isnetworld and complyworks and cor. This costs a lot of time and effort. Then some oil companies use some other verification of our safety record. And some other companies require us to pay for the privilege of being able to invoice them. It seems there are a lot of ways to keep us paying to be able to work.
Isnt that true.
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Old 11-05-2013, 09:54 PM
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Isnt that true.
think it's time for the tail to quit wagging the dog.....
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Old 11-06-2013, 07:59 PM
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Good Ol' Boy Good Ol' Boy is offline
 
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I'm responsible for maintaining ISN, Complyworks, PICS, COR, for my company. Because we also operate in the US I have to worry about NCMS and Veriforce as well! It is all a big racket and occupies an incredible amount of my time. All just to be eligible to bid on work. However, now that we are compliant, it's really annoying when I have to fill out a safety questionnaire from some other non-ISN/Complyworks/etc... prospective client.
I can't believe I'm even talking about this B.S. away from work
I need a drink!!!
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Old 11-06-2013, 08:19 PM
rugatika rugatika is offline
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The whole safety bureaucracy scam ranks right up there with the HR scam that is only surpassed by the whole tax scheme/accounting scam. Just keep making up rules and regulations to the point that you need to create a whole profession of suits that dedicate their entire lives to understanding and explaining and complying with all the bs rules and regulations so they can keep their damn fingernails clean.

No, I'm not against safety, employee fairness or taxes. Just the snowball of regulations and the clingers-on that inevitably find a way to suck more money out of everyone's pocket.


OK, I'm kinda against taxes.

Sorry for the derail and the rant. You have my sympathy for having to navigate all these scams.
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Old 11-06-2013, 08:44 PM
plinker plinker is offline
 
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Lets see if I can sum up ISNetworld in a short easy to understand paragraph.

Using ISNetworld is like wiping your butt with 80 grit sandpaper. Painful, useless, and time consuming to clean up the mess.

I spent so much time doing Ravs and constantly having to answer the questions that had no bearing on our company. You could get into arguments with the staff at Isn and all they would tell you was to send in a request to have certain questions taken off your questionnaire. Constantly in the wrong status because of the time required to work on questions they would tell you you'd have to answer. The irony?? One day I went into QTracs to see how much money we had made on those customers demanding ISN and it amounted to less than 5,000.00 over 6 years. Considering that ISN cost us thousands every year it was a complete bust in revenue generation.

Complyworks was pretty easy and quick and painless.
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Old 11-07-2013, 08:58 AM
Sigma Sigma is offline
 
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I am not surprised that no one has anything good to say about ISN. I agree that it appears as a cash grab by many companies which can hurt the smaller companies who cannot easily pass on the extra costs to their customers. I cannot think where ISN got us more business other than keep our original client happy for a number of years.
I am totally against having multiple systems to satisfy the different clients. THe RAVs review was painful when documents got rejected because they were missing a couple of words the auditor was looking for even though the intent was crystal clear. I learned quickly to paste parts of the legislation into the document to make the auditor happy. The only good thing I can say about the RAVs review was that it gave me good ideas to improve our documentation with items that were missed by the original author. I thought the latest change by ISN to match their work codes to WCB's was good until it added another 20 sections to the RAVs review. I will show your comments to my son in law (boss) and I am sure we will drop ISN in the spring. One thing that irks me is the client companies that send us safety surveys to see our documentation each year so we can do business with them. These companies are not on ISN or any other system and a couple do not even have their COR. We will have to look at Complyworks as an alternative but I am not sure that it will give us any new business either.

Keep the comments coming and thanks again.
Sig
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Old 11-07-2013, 09:29 AM
nekred nekred is offline
 
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Funny Thread....

Part of my job is to maintain our status on ISN,Complyworks, PICS, etc.

It is almost a full time job just looking after the bureacracy. I see many of the comments on here and agree with them.

It all started years ago with the COR and having to have that meant you were recognised by a Partnership between OHS, WCB and Industry Association as having a safety program that met certain criteria. Then with a peer auditor process and external auditirs, and the safety associations all granting COR's so they could say they helped companies save $XXXX that the COR process became meaningless.

Because of the stricter OHS laws and Bill C-45 companies who held prime needed more assurance they were not going to jail... Oil companies subcontracted out their prime obligations a long time ago and now the next company down on the chain realised the liabilities and that they needed more assurance so they built their own subcontractor pre-qualification process which required a legal department to write MSA's so instead these were built by one legal company and then every oither company boiler plated them and they are all designed for project work involving construction or manufacturing.

Then somebody came up with the idea that they could take this over using an online process to make things easier for the client and gain revenue from the prospective subs and charge a nominal fee to the clients so it would not be considered extortion.

Great Business model!.... However because now people needed their COR and be compliant with ISN like companies now all the people that built safety manuals and sold them to companies to meet COR changed their business and now they help companies become ISN compliant for a fee.

Now the big companies are starting to conduct ISN audits to check to see if the companies are for real or just making up stuff to look good on ISN and stay on the bid list. It has become a circle jerk.

You can look at a companies WCB status and discount/surcharge position online. I see competitors who are in a surcharge position with WCB because they have higher than industry average claim expenses, yet on ISN they have glowing numbers and status....because they have had a third party look after their ISN.

I was getting calls weekly from "Safety Services" to take over or ISn and finally I had to get rude and tell them the next time they call I would report them to BBB because I am tired of their harassment.

As a safety professional I see that we have created a safety industry based on bureacracy and it embarrasses me to see so much done for nothing. Instead of having people out working, supervising, training, assisting people to ensure they are provided with tools, equipment, and intellectual capital to do their job safely we are dealing with a bureacratic nightmare....

I am waiting for the day when somebody says enough is enough and stands up and calls this what it is... legal extortion in the name of misplaced diligence. Being denied the ability to consuct work and thus affecting ones livelyhood because somebpdy is not participating in a phantom meaningless process could be argued in a court of law according to the charter of rights and freedoms....

Now I am in transportation and one section in ISN that i have to complete is a journey management process.... Transportation is JOURNEY MANAGEMENT... we do not send out a truck unless it is asked for and it will generate revenue...there also is transportation law requiring a bill of lading and conditions of carraige... and yet we have to provide a waiver of subrogation for insurance which actually is meaningless fr us as the bill of lading supersedes any and all other agreements. Yet their is no provision for that in the ISN....

Anyways that was the long version

Short version:

This is complete and total waste of time and resources in useless bureacracy but we have to participate because if we do not we do not stay in business.
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Old 11-07-2013, 10:37 AM
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Good post nekred...you nailed it!!
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Old 11-07-2013, 10:47 AM
Sigma Sigma is offline
 
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Good post nekred...you nailed it!!
x2
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Old 11-07-2013, 11:15 AM
sikwhiskey sikwhiskey is offline
 
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Originally Posted by nekred View Post
Funny Thread....

Short version:

This is complete and total waste of time and resources in useless bureaucracy but we have to participate because if we do not we do not stay in business.
I couldn't agree more, well said!
I find it funny, when the phone rings, your not on ISN or Comply works and the company is willing to overlook that because there are No Services available on their "list". If more services start to refuse this paper scam, Oil companies will change there tune. That and the extra $500/day charge for being "super paper safe" usually gets the message through. They want it, they pay for it.
IMHO the biggest lack in most safety programs is Not enough on going, hands on, training. Just more paper work for the burn bin.
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Old 11-07-2013, 11:26 AM
foothills26 foothills26 is offline
 
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I am also the safety officer of a small oilfield construction company (under 10 employees) and we have been using Comply Works for a long time (forget what it was previously called) and now we are also on ISNet. If you are already on ISNet you will have now problems with Comply Works it is way easier. The only reason we are on both is some companies want us on the one and the rest on the other but if I was only going to one I would use the Comply Works as long as your main employer is not on with ISNet.
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Old 11-07-2013, 11:54 AM
nekred nekred is offline
 
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Ok another little rant....

Back to journey management....

We are an oilfield transportation company that is service oriented...

Customer Calls, We Haul, Customer Pays, Thats it, That's All....

I have to do the song and dance about how we will minimise unnecessary travel, restrict travel in inclement weather, travel in daylight hours etc... yatyatyata.... This is the Alberta Oilpatch....

Then from the same customer who requires me to comply with IsN calls from the lease and needs his stuff RFN and is screaming and hollering at 7:30PM in the middle of a blizzard out in the Tooleys and Skeg... and when our guy gets there after 13 hours of hellish driving... gets ticked off because our guy can't do a backhaul RFN because he is out of hours and has to stay in compliance with HOS rules....

and then our guy has the right to refuse which is another section in ISN and if our guy refuses the company we are working for threatens to call someone else for all their work, and then has the gall to argue the bill because he goit overcharged because the round trip took 2 whole days when he could drive it in 10 hours in his pickup....

At times like these I pull my hair out when I see another requirement is added for us to comply with in RAVS... because some safety b'crat somewhere in an ivory tower thinks we need it....

Or when an oil company calls in all subs in for a mandatory 1/2 day meeting to talk about how gloves are now mandatory on site and hands out expensive kevlar gloves as an example of what they have to do and go over the 7 cardinal rules etc... meanwhile the very next day a guy working for the oil company directly rolls a quad and gets killed because he was not wearing a helmet... yet we never hear about that....

I am a safety professional and I am embarrassed quite often....

I ended up in safety unintentionally...Not by accident as most.... most safety people have a sudden attitude change when they suffer a major injury and because they can't do any other productive work so they become a safety guy... look at how many safety guys have a limp or are missing fingers, or other signs of an injury!.....

It was unintentional... I worked in many industries and often times I would have Safety People come and tell me how to do MY job. For example when framing i wore running shoes when on the roof because with the flexible bottoms vs workboots provided more agility thes reduced the risk of suffering a fall... A safety guy came along and said..what if you shot yourself in the toe with a nailer thus you need steeled toed boots.... I said if I was that F'n stupid what am I doing on the gD roof of a house...

It was unintentional... I was walking a 2nd floor beam measuring it out for the joists when an guy come by on the main floor and asked to talk to me and I told him to wait outside by the property line and I would be there when I was done... he said to stop work and come now... I told him to go f'n do what I told him before he got hurt... he left and shortly thereafter my boss came and introduced me to an OHS officer in plainclothes... I said I thought he was just a member of John Q Public and that for his safety I had advised him to leave the worksite and I would be right there... Today that man is a friend of mine and we chuckle over or meeting....

I found it very frustrating when me as a working foreman who cares about each and every one of my guys and always did my best to see them safe at the end of the day that knew my job well being told by guys without an f'n clue how to do it....

It was untintentional... Finally my boss came to me one day and said all this f'n safety is on my back even though we have not had an incident...and you are good at paperwork and have some schooling would you consider becoming our safety guy...

I said I could eat donuts and drink coffe with the best of them....15 years ago...

Today as a safety professional I still see the stupid safety guys.... The guys who insist my guys wear safety glasses no matter what... even if when spotting when backing up trucks when they are fogging up.... I then turn this around and because I know the law I like to quote the section about how PPE must not itself endanger the worker... There is no appreciable hazard to the eyes... yet a very real hazard of getting caught in a crush point or being backed over by being effectively blinded by a useless piece of gear...

ISN is just a sample of the level of stupidity this leads to to employ a bunch of unproductive morons....

Now let me tell you how I really feel!....

90 percent of safety guys are idiots that could not make it in a revenue producing position, the other 9.99 percent are idiots that lack the ability to organise a pi$$-up in a brewery or lose their viginity in a thai *****house with a fistfull of thousand dollar bills....

the rest are kind of like me....
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Old 11-07-2013, 12:00 PM
nekred nekred is offline
 
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Thanks I needed that!....
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Old 11-07-2013, 12:25 PM
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Nekred I agree whole heartedly.
As the company CSO for an Oil and Gas service company my issue is this.
You are members of ISN and Comply works and must not only achieve but maintain your standard or be red flagged as a potential contractor. Costs must be incorporated in your charges to maintain training, documentation and records etc for your employees and your business.
The end use client says they understand and expect that but hire a contractor who does not have their COR or meet the standards expected. Often it seems they have been given a contract for the lower quote and are escorted in and out of the job site through the back gate.

If that isn't a double standard then I don't know what is?
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