Your drug and alcohol policy does not stop at your employees. Every person who enters your workplace — contractors, subcontractors, labour hire workers, consultants, delivery drivers, and visitors — must comply with your site’s requirements. If they are impaired and cause harm, your organisation bears a significant share of the liability.

Yet many organisations have robust testing programs for their own employees while treating contractors and visitors as an afterthought. This creates a gap in the safety framework that is both a compliance risk and a genuine safety hazard.

This guide covers how to brief contractors and visitors effectively, the legal basis for your requirements, and how to manage the practical challenges of extending your program beyond your direct workforce.

The Legal Basis for Testing Contractors and Visitors

Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) has a primary duty of care to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers and other persons who may be affected by the work. This duty extends to contractors, their workers, and visitors.

Key Legal Principles

• PCBU obligations are not limited to employees. The definition of “worker” under WHS legislation is broad. It includes employees, contractors, subcontractors, labour hire workers, outworkers, apprentices, trainees, work experience students, and volunteers.
• Multiple duty holders. Both the host PCBU and the contractor’s PCBU have concurrent duties. However, the host organisation — as the controller of the workplace — has the primary obligation to manage site-wide hazards, including substance impairment.
• Visitors are covered. While visitors are not “workers,” the PCBU’s duty extends to “other persons” who may be affected by the work. A visitor who is impaired — or who is harmed by an impaired worker — falls within this duty.

Contractual Authority

The legal authority to require drug and alcohol testing of contractors typically flows from two sources:

• WHS legislation — The PCBU’s duty of care provides a legislative basis for requiring reasonable safety measures, including testing, from persons entering the workplace.
• Contract terms — Testing requirements should be explicitly included in contractor agreements, purchase orders, and site access conditions. Without a contractual basis, enforcement is more difficult.

The Induction Process

The site induction is the primary mechanism for briefing contractors and visitors on your drug and alcohol requirements. It should cover the following elements.

Policy Summary

Provide a clear, concise summary of your drug and alcohol policy as it applies to contractors and visitors. This should include:

• The scope of the policy (who it applies to on your site)
• Prohibited conduct (attending site under the influence, consuming substances on site, possessing substances on site)
• Testing types that may apply (pre-access, random, for-cause, post-incident)
• Consequences of a positive result or refusal to test
• How to declare prescription medications that may affect test results

Acknowledgement

Every contractor and visitor should sign an acknowledgement confirming that they have been briefed on the policy and agree to comply. This acknowledgement should be retained as a record. Digital acknowledgement via a site induction platform is more reliable and easier to audit than paper forms.

Identification

Ensure your induction system captures sufficient information to identify each person — full name, employer, role, and contact details. This information is essential for testing, record keeping, and incident management.

Pre-Access Requirements

Many organisations, particularly in mining, construction, and heavy industry, require contractors to pass a drug and alcohol test before being granted site access. Pre-access testing serves two purposes:

• Immediate risk reduction. Any person who tests positive before entering the site is denied access, preventing the risk from materialising.
• Deterrent effect. Contractors who know they will be tested before accessing the site are less likely to use substances in the period leading up to their attendance.

Implementation Considerations

• Testing location. Pre-access testing is typically conducted at the site gatehouse, muster point, or a designated testing area. Ensure the location provides adequate privacy.
• Scheduling. Pre-access testing adds time to the site entry process. Plan for this in your scheduling, particularly when large numbers of contractors are mobilising for a project.
• Acceptance of external results. Some organisations accept recent test results from the contractor’s own testing program. If you do this, define the recency requirement (e.g., within the past 48 hours) and the standards the test must have met.
• Cost. Determine whether the host organisation or the contractor bears the cost of pre-access testing. This should be specified in the contract.

Ongoing Testing Requirements

Pre-access testing alone is not sufficient for contractors who will be on site for extended periods. They should be included in your ongoing testing program:

• Random selection pool. Long-term contractors should be included in your random selection pool alongside employees. This demonstrates that the program applies equally to all persons on site.
• For-cause testing. Your supervisors should have the authority — and the training — to trigger for-cause testing of contractors when indicators of impairment are observed.
• Post-incident testing. Contractors involved in workplace incidents should be tested on the same basis as employees.

Managing Non-Compliance

When a contractor or visitor fails a test or refuses to comply with your testing requirements, the response differs from the employee context because the employment relationship is different.

Positive Test Result

• Immediate removal from site. The contractor should be removed from the workplace immediately. They are not your employee, so disciplinary processes do not apply — but site access is within your control.
• Notification to the contractor’s employer. Inform the contracting company of the positive result and the removal from site. Their internal disciplinary process is their responsibility.
• Documentation. Record the test result, the removal, and the notification to the contractor’s employer. This documentation supports your due diligence record.
• Re-entry conditions. Define the conditions under which the individual may return to site, if at all. This should be specified in your policy.

Refusal to Test

A contractor who refuses to submit to testing should be denied site access or removed from site. Refusal to test should be treated as non-compliance with site safety requirements, which is a breach of the contractor agreement.

Contractor Company Non-Compliance

If a contracting company consistently sends workers who fail pre-access testing, refuse testing, or breach your drug and alcohol requirements, this reflects on the contractor’s safety management. Address this through the contract management process — formal notification, improvement requirements, and ultimately termination of the contract if the issue persists.

Principal Contractor Obligations

In construction and some other industries, the principal contractor has specific obligations under WHS legislation for the management of the construction site. These obligations include managing the risks arising from all work activities on the site — including those performed by subcontractors.

For principal contractors, this means:

• Establishing site-wide drug and alcohol requirements that apply to all subcontractors
• Ensuring all subcontractors acknowledge and comply with these requirements
• Conducting or arranging testing for subcontractor workers
• Managing non-compliance through the contractual chain

The principal contractor’s drug and alcohol requirements should be communicated to all subcontractors before work commences and reinforced through the site induction process.

Visitor Management

Not all visitors require testing, but all visitors should be made aware of your drug and alcohol requirements. A brief statement during visitor sign-in — “By entering this site, you acknowledge that this is a drug and alcohol-free workplace and that you are not under the influence of any impairing substance” — is a minimum standard.

For visitors who will be in operational areas or who will be on site for extended periods, a more detailed briefing and an acknowledgement may be appropriate.

Making It Practical

The key to effective contractor and visitor management is building drug and alcohol requirements into your existing site access processes — induction, sign-in, contract management — rather than treating them as a separate, additional process. When compliance is integrated into the workflow, it becomes routine rather than burdensome.

Need to manage contractor and visitor testing alongside your employee program? Start a free trial of FairTest and bring your entire workforce — employees, contractors, and visitors — into a single, streamlined testing management platform.