What the law requires
When you entrust works, services or supplies to an external company or to a self-employed worker inside your premises in Italy, Legislative Decree 81/2008 (the Italian consolidated health and safety act, known as D.Lgs. 81/08) gives you, as the client, a precise duty: verify the technical and professional suitability (idoneità tecnico-professionale) of whoever comes in, in relation to the work you are entrusting to them.
The last few words are the ones almost everybody skips. There is no such thing as a check that is valid in absolute terms: the same company can be suitable for routine maintenance and not for work at height or in a confined space. The check is made on the specific job, not on the company in general.
What it consists of, in practice
The law sets out the minimum content of the check. In practice it translates into collecting a set of documents that includes at least:
- the Chamber of Commerce registration certificate (visura camerale)
- a valid certificate of social security and insurance contribution compliance (DURC)
- the company's risk assessment document, or a self-declaration where the law allows it
- a declaration of the average annual workforce, broken down by job category
- a declaration that the company is not subject to suspension or disqualification orders
That is the minimum. Depending on the job, you add the documents of the people who will physically enter your site and those of the equipment they will bring in — we cover them in a dedicated guide.
The most common mistake: treating it as a one-off task
The check is done properly when the relationship starts, the file is archived, and there it stays. The problem is that those documents expire: the DURC lasts a few months, training certificates have a validity period, fitness-for-work assessments must be renewed.
Six months later the same company is working on your site with a file that no longer proves anything. And in the event of an accident or an inspection, what matters is not the check you did in January: it is whether that company was compliant on the day something happened.
What makes a check that holds up
From what we see in companies, a solid check has four features, whatever tools are used to keep it:
- the list of required documents is decided beforehand, by type of work, not improvised company by company
- every document has an expiry date on record, not just a delivery date
- who checked what, and when, is tracked: a check with no owner and no date is not a check
- there is evidence of what was checked, in the version that was checked
The fourth point is the one that makes the difference when it really matters. If a document is replaced, you must be able to show what you had in hand at the time of the check, not only what you have now.
When the spreadsheet stops being enough
With three suppliers and one contract a year you can manage by hand. The threshold comes sooner than it seems: a dozen active companies, a few subcontractors and two sites are enough for nobody to be able to say, at any given moment, who is compliant and who is not.
The sign is always the same: when answering the question “can this company come in tomorrow?” means opening a folder and checking files one by one, the system you are using is no longer protecting you.
Last updated: 2 October 2026