Engaging a grounds contractor does not transfer the safety duty to them. Under New Zealand law it creates a shared one, and failing to coordinate is an offence in its own right, separate from any harm that results.
General guidance, not legal advice. For your situation, check with a workplace health and safety professional or a lawyer.
You are a PCBU too
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 uses PCBU, a person conducting a business or undertaking, to describe any organisation running an operation. A property owner or manager and their contractor typically both qualify, as does a body corporate.
Under section 34, where more than one PCBU has an overlapping duty, each must, so far as reasonably practicable, consult, cooperate and coordinate with the others. That runs both ways. A contractor's insurance does not discharge it on your behalf, and your facilities policy does not discharge it on theirs.
The penalty applies to the failure itself
Breaching the duty is an offence separate from the underlying work. An individual can face a fine of up to $20,000, and a company or other body up to $100,000, under section 34(2). That applies to the failure to coordinate, not only to an incident resulting from it.
What it looks like on a real site
On a hedge and tree job at a commercial site, it is a short pre-start conversation, not paperwork. You tell the contractor what they could not otherwise know: underground services near a bed, a fragile retaining wall, a path that floods, the times foot traffic peaks. They tell you what they need: a bay kept clear, an entrance closed during ladder work. Then you agree the plan.
- Share known hazards before the visit: services, structural issues, access limits, wet or sloping ground.
- Agree timing around foot traffic, deliveries or trading hours.
- Confirm who sets up exclusion zones and signage, and where.
- Name a point of contact on both sides for anything unexpected.
- Keep a record that the conversation happened. A short email is enough.
Our approach
Our crews run a standard site check before starting on any commercial or shared property, noting entrances, foot traffic patterns and anything near powerlines or structures, because that is where an uncoordinated crew and building occupants most often cross paths. Being fully battery-powered removes another source of friction: we can work around occupied buildings without the noise and exhaust that make access harder to schedule.