Contractor Management Challenges Abound in 2026

There's a moment every general contractor knows well. You're walking a job site, and you spot something that makes your stomach tighten. A subcontractor worker without proper fall protection. A piece of equipment in poor condition. A shortcut taken because the schedule is tight and everyone's feeling the pressure.

In that moment, you're reminded of an uncomfortable truth: no matter how robust your own safety program is, you're only as protected as the weakest link in your chain of contractors.

A new industry study suggests this isn't just an occasional headache—it's becoming the defining challenge of our era.

The 2025 Construction Industry Safety Challenges report, a collaborative effort by J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc. and the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), surveyed 719 construction professionals between June and July 2025. What emerges is a portrait of an industry that genuinely cares about safety—you can feel it in the data—yet finds itself increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of managing that commitment across fragmented, multi-employer job sites.

General Contractors: Caught in the Middle

It's no accident that general contractors were the largest respondent group in this study, at 23%. These organizations face a significant safety challenge. They're responsible not just for their own crews, but also for ensuring that every subcontractor who sets foot on their site upholds the same standards.

That's an enormous ask. And frankly, it's getting harder.

The study identifies "Managing Safety Across Multiple Subcontractors and Trades on Job Sites" as one of six fundamental challenges the industry must confront. The researchers don't mince words about the root causes: contractors who don't take ownership of safety programs, and the very real difficulty of finding subcontractors who treat safety as more than a line item in a contract.

If you've spent any time as a GC, you've felt this frustration. You've had that conversation with a sub who nods along during the safety orientation, then does things their own way the moment your back is turned. You've wondered whether the problem is with them or something deeper in how we've structured these relationships.

The numbers suggest it's the latter. When 16% of respondents name subcontractor management as a significant challenge—and when 31% of companies rank contractor management among their top priorities for the next 18 months—we're not dealing with a few bad actors. We're looking at a systemic issue that demands a systemic response.

The Consistency Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here's something that keeps me up at night when I think about this industry: the study found that inconsistent processes across companies and departments are directly leading to compliance failures and penalties. The researchers point to a clear need for centralized systems to manage safety data and improve consistency.

Now multiply that problem across every subcontractor on a busy job site.

Each sub arrives with their own safety culture—some excellent, some adequate, some questionable. They bring their own training programs, their own documentation habits, their own assumptions about what "good enough" looks like. The result is a patchwork of compliance approaches, full of seams and gaps. And incidents have a way of finding those gaps.

There is some good news here. The study found that subcontractor onboarding with a genuine compliance focus makes a real difference—71% of respondents reported significant or moderate impact from this practice. That's encouraging.

But it also means nearly three in ten organizations aren't seeing meaningful results from their onboarding efforts. Which raises an uncomfortable question: what separates effective onboarding from what we might call compliance theater? What makes the difference between a subcontractor who truly internalizes your safety expectations and one who's just checking boxes to get on the approved vendor list?

I don't think anyone has fully cracked that code yet. But the stakes are too high not to keep trying.

We Can't Afford to Keep Being Reactive

Perhaps the statistic that troubled me most in this entire report: 38% of construction companies still lack a proactive approach to safety and regulatory compliance. These organizations meet the minimum requirements, then wait for something to go wrong before they act.

In the context of contractor management, reactive safety isn't just inefficient. It's a form of hoping for the best while knowing, deep down, that hope isn't a strategy.

By the time a general contractor discovers a subcontractor's safety deficiency through an actual incident, the damage is done. A worker is hurt—maybe seriously. A piece of equipment is removed from the site for repairs or replacement. Productivity factors and budgets take a hit as a result. Relationships strain. And everyone involved is left wondering what they could have done differently.

The honest answer is: quite a lot, actually. But only if we're willing to shift how we think about these partnerships in the first place.

Rethinking the Relationship

Safety can no longer live in the fine print of subcontractor agreements. It can't be a requirement we enforce through penalties and hope for the best. That model worked—sort of—when job sites were simpler, and the relationships were more stable. But the modern construction project is a constantly shifting ecosystem of specialized trades, and the old approach simply can't keep up.

What we need is genuine partnerships. Shared data. Shared training. Shared accountability. The kind of relationship where a subcontractor feels comfortable raising a safety concern without worrying about losing the contract, and where the GC has enough visibility into sub operations to catch problems before they become incidents.

Is that idealistic? Maybe. But the alternative—continuing to patch a broken system while workers pay the price—isn't acceptable either.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Based on this study's findings, general contractors serious about strengthening subcontractor safety management might consider a few approaches.

First, take a hard look at your onboarding process. Not the paperwork—the actual experience. Does it communicate that safety is a genuine priority, or does it feel like administrative friction to get through? The study shows onboarding works for most organizations, but effectiveness varies wildly. Understanding that variance matters.

Second, extend your technology across organizational boundaries. Nearly half of respondents are using digital inspection tools and real-time incident reporting software. These tools become exponentially more powerful when they include subcontractors—when everyone's working from the same data, in real time, with full visibility.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, address the engagement gap. The study identifies workforce engagement as a critical unmet need, emphasizing the importance of building safety cultures that go beyond minimum compliance. This applies doubly—maybe triply—to subcontractor relationships, where the default mode is transactional rather than relational.

Building that kind of culture takes time. It takes trust. It takes showing up consistently, project after project, and demonstrating that you mean what you say about safety. There are no shortcuts here.

The Work Ahead

The 2025 Construction Industry Safety Challenges study confirms something many general contractors have sensed for years: our greatest safety challenges are increasingly challenges of coordination, communication, and culture across organizational lines. As Ray Chishti, Senior EHS Editor at J. J. Keller, observes in the report, safe job sites are productive job sites—preventing incidents protects both budget and schedule.

That's true. But let's be honest about what really matters here. Behind every incident statistic is a person. Someone with a family waiting for them to come home. Someone who trusted that the people running the job site had their back.

For prime and general contractors, the path forward is clear, even if it isn't easy. Your safety performance will only ever be as strong as your weakest subcontractor. Building the systems, relationships, and shared accountability to lift every partner's performance isn't just a compliance initiative; it's a sound business strategy.

Patrick Robinson, February 2026

Source: "2025 Construction Industry Safety Challenges: A Comprehensive View of Factors Shaping Safety Performance," a collaborative study by J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc. and the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). The study was fielded June 25–July 10, 2025, with 719 respondents. With appreciation to Ray Chishti (Senior EHS Editor, J. J. Keller) and Gabriel Atencio (Administrator of Construction Practice Specialty, ASSP) for their leadership on this important research.