A new system of mutual recognition between previously competing health & safety schemes is a welcome boost to contractors' finances, says Bob Towse, head of technical and safety at the HVCA.
The launch of SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement) is a major step forward for efforts to simplify and rationalise the hugely wasteful tender pre-qualification system that contractors currently have to endure.

Members of the SSIP Forum, which is supported by government and the Health & Safety Executive, will now mutually recognise each other's schemes meaning that contractors who join one scheme automatically pre-qualify to tender for work under the others as well.

SSIP already includes Constructionline, the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS), Exor Management Services and the National House Building Council. Their schemes ensure compliance with the core criteria for health and safety competence contained in the Approved Code of Practice to the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007.

This is such an important step forward because the proliferation of pre-qualification schemes in the construction industry costs specialist contractors more than £40 million a year. Firms often have no choice but to join several schemes in order to be allowed to bid for work and each has its own criteria. This puts an unfair and expensive administrative burden on small sub-contractors in particular.

Quality

The Heating and Ventilating Contractors Association (HVCA) has also joined the SSIP Forum, which means every HVCA member firm is automatically deemed to satisfy the requirements of all the SSIP schemes. All HVCA members are subjected to third party on site independent inspection and assessment every three years and interim 'desk top' audits to remain in membership. This quality assurance process has been recognised by SSIP as meeting or exceeding their requirements.

Many clients now limit their use of approved contractor schemes to those operated by members of the SSIP Forum and they will quickly see the benefits of this streamlining of the pre-qualification process. The delays and resource wastage created by the duplication of effort required to continually provide evidence of health and safety competence to many different schemes has hampered attempts to speed up project delivery and cut overall costs.

Mutual recognition also levels the playing field for specialist engineering firms of all sizes and removes the penalty on those who lacked the resources to deal with the demands of all these competing schemes. It has the potential to reduce overheads significantly and could make all the difference in the current economic downturn.

The CDM Regulations were redrafted in 2007 to try and simplify the health and safety pre-qualification process, which had become incredibly unwieldy. There was a strong desire to focus clients on core safety criteria, such as the need for contractors to have a health and safety policy; to ensure the appropriate training and qualifications are in place for individual workers; monitor and review processes; have a clear accident reporting strategy and follow-up procedures; put risk assessment methodology in place, make adequate provision for the welfare of their employees and so on.

The SSIP initiative reinforces this message by focusing clients back onto the core criteria enshrined in the CDM Regulations and emphasises the fact that creating a vast and complicated paper trail does not necessarily result in better health and safety standards.