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Literacy levels in the construction industry are considerably poorer than the Australian workforce in general, yet modern occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation requires construction workers to develop documented safe systems of work. There is a tendency by subcontractors to engage an OHS specialist to write these documents with little cognitive input from the subcontractors. They feign compliance with this form of knowledge that is theoretically based, yet purports to be superior to their own knowledge. Subcontractors' OHS knowledge is grounded in experience rather than theory, and they trust this form of knowing because it has developed over many years of praxis. Unless subcontractors are involved in a collaborative arrangement that values them and their embodied, embedded and tacit knowing, OHS will never reach a sustainable level. Subcontractors will act with minimum compliance rather than best practice. The dilemma is to answer the questions: How can the subcontractors' perceived needs be integrated into the OHS push for compliance? How can their concerns be addressed?