Avetta Expands Work Readiness Ecosystem as Contractor Risk Moves Beyond Compliance

Contractor management is increasingly becoming a workforce technology problem as companies try to connect safety credentials, compliance records, procurement decisions and frontline readiness. Avetta is expanding its ecosystem with partnerships involving safety consultancy Epigroup, source-to-pay platform Unimarket and field operations technology provider Wakata, creating new connections between supplier risk, worker readiness and day-to-day operations.

For enterprises managing hundreds or thousands of contractors, knowing whether a supplier is compliant is only one part of the workforce risk equation.

The harder question is whether the right people, qualifications, assessments, equipment and processes are actually in place when work begins.

That is the problem Avetta is targeting with three new partnerships announced this week. The company has added Epigroup, Unimarket and Wakata to its partner ecosystem, extending its work-readiness platform into workplace safety consulting, procurement workflows and field operations.

The move reflects a broader change in how organizations manage extended workforces. Contractors and suppliers increasingly operate as an extension of an enterprise’s own workforce, particularly in construction, infrastructure, energy and other high-risk industries. That makes workforce readiness dependent on data that historically sat in separate systems.

Avetta’s strategy is to connect those systems.

The partnership with Epigroup, a Perth-based safety consultancy, adds a more people-focused layer to the model. Epigroup works across psychosocial risk, technical safety staffing, workplace media and safety culture. For HR and safety teams, that expands contractor management beyond documentation and credentials into areas such as employee wellbeing, organizational culture and frontline safety practices.

The relationship with Unimarket addresses a different part of the workflow: procurement.

Unimarket’s source-to-pay platform is being integrated with Avetta so supplier readiness, risk and compliance information can become available within sourcing and purchasing processes. In practical terms, procurement teams can potentially consider supplier risk earlier in the buying lifecycle rather than treating compliance as a separate process after a supplier has already been selected.

That integration matters because supplier selection increasingly involves more than price and availability.

For large enterprises, procurement teams need to understand whether a supplier has appropriate qualifications, safety records and compliance documentation before work is awarded. Connecting this information to source-to-pay software could reduce the number of manual checks required between procurement, risk and operational teams.

Wakata takes the integration closer to the worksite.

The platform extends Avetta’s compliance and governance capabilities into field operations, including worker assessments and plant and equipment management. The combination is designed to give organizations a more connected view of contractor compliance, worker readiness and asset-related controls.

The implications extend beyond contractor management.

Australia’s infrastructure sector is already dealing with a simultaneous labor shortage and digital transformation challenge. Infrastructure Australia projects the country’s infrastructure workforce shortage could reach 300,000 workers by 2027. Its 2025 research also found that 64% of building and construction firms surveyed had invested in digitalization over the previous year, including BIM, AI, robotics and automation.

That combination puts pressure on employers to get more value from the workforce they already have while ensuring contractors can safely operate increasingly digital environments.

It also explains why workforce readiness is becoming broader than traditional HR technology.

Conventional HR systems tend to focus on employees. Contractor-management platforms focus on external workers. Procurement systems manage suppliers. Enterprise asset-management tools track equipment. Safety systems handle incidents, assessments and compliance.

The emerging opportunity is connecting those datasets.

Avetta’s partnerships point toward that convergence. Instead of treating worker credentials, supplier risk, procurement decisions and field assessments as independent records, enterprises can begin treating them as interconnected components of operational readiness.

The trend is particularly relevant as AI and automation enter frontline industries.

The International Labour Organization has said AI, digitalization, robotics and automation can improve occupational safety and health through smart monitoring and automation, while also creating new risks that require proactive management.

Construction illustrates the challenge. RICS’ 2025 research found that 46% of respondents identified a lack of skilled personnel as a major barrier to AI adoption, while 37% cited integration with existing systems.

Those two barriers are closely connected to the workforce-readiness problem.

A company can purchase sophisticated AI or digital field technology, but adoption will remain limited if contractors lack the required skills, if assessment records cannot be verified, or if information is trapped across disconnected systems.

That makes interoperability increasingly important.

Avetta is not alone in pursuing this broader enterprise ecosystem model. Major HR and enterprise software providers including Workday, SAP, Microsoft and ServiceNow have increasingly blurred the boundaries between workforce data, workflow automation, procurement, analytics and operational systems. Specialist platforms remain important because high-risk industries require deeper domain capabilities than general-purpose HR suites typically provide.

The competitive question for Avetta will therefore be whether its ecosystem can become an operational layer rather than simply another compliance destination.

The company’s September 10 Avetta Summit in Sydney will bring Unimarket and Wakata together with Avetta in its Connection Centre, where the companies plan to demonstrate how the technologies work across the wider ecosystem.

For enterprise HR, procurement and operations leaders, the more significant development is the underlying architecture.

The workforce of a large organization increasingly extends beyond its direct employees. Contractors, suppliers, temporary workers and specialist service providers can determine whether a project gets delivered safely and on schedule.

Technology that connects readiness data across those groups could therefore become an increasingly important part of enterprise workforce infrastructure.

The shift is from “Is this supplier compliant?” to “Is this workforce ready to perform this work safely?”

That is a considerably broader question—and one that requires HR, procurement, safety and operations systems to work together.

Market Landscape

The contractor-management market is converging with several adjacent enterprise software categories:

• Workforce management: employee and contingent-worker scheduling, credentials and workforce data.
• Contractor management: supplier qualification, compliance, insurance and safety requirements.
• Procurement technology: supplier selection, sourcing, purchasing and source-to-pay workflows.
• EHS technology: environmental, health and safety management, incident reporting and risk controls.
• Field operations: worker assessments, equipment management and operational execution.
• Workforce analytics: using connected data to identify skills, compliance and operational gaps.

Avetta’s ecosystem strategy sits at the intersection of these categories.

The market opportunity is reinforced by Australia’s infrastructure labor situation. Infrastructure Australia says labor remains the sector’s most critical delivery risk, with shortages potentially reaching 300,000 workers by 2027. It also recommends coordinated approaches to developing digital technology and other emerging construction skills.

Meanwhile, research into Construction 4.0 in Australia has identified fragmented technology integration, limited governance and digital skills gaps as barriers to wider adoption of technologies including AI, IoT and robotics.

For enterprise buyers, this suggests that the next generation of workforce technology will increasingly be evaluated on integration and operational outcomes, not simply the number of features within an individual application.

Top Insights

• Avetta added Epigroup, Unimarket and Wakata, connecting contractor readiness with safety consulting, procurement workflows and field operations management.
• Unimarket integration brings supplier risk into procurement, potentially giving sourcing teams earlier visibility into compliance and workforce-readiness requirements.
• Wakata extends readiness into field operations, linking worker assessments and equipment management with broader contractor governance.
• Labor shortages are increasing technology’s workforce role, with Infrastructure Australia projecting Australia’s infrastructure worker shortage could reach 300,000 by 2027.
• AI adoption depends on workforce readiness, with RICS identifying skilled personnel and system integration among major barriers to construction AI deployment.

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