BCSA Membership pre qualifies for Health & Safety

The proliferation of health and safety pre-qualification questionnaires has placed increasing burdens on small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) to repeatedly pre-qualify for both public and private sector work.

“This situation has become an unacceptable business burden to many small contractors and in turn, leads to a negative view of health and safety,” said Pete Walker BCSA Safety Manager.

In order to help its members, the BCSA has joined the Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) Forum which has recognised that the BCSA membership assessment process satisfies the Core Criteria for Health & Safety and therefore the members demonstrate they have qualified for health & safety and should benefit from the ‘mutual recognition’ arrangements.

SSIP acts as an umbrella organization for clients, contractors and consultants to facilitate further structured mutual recognition between schemes and others who carry out health and safety pre-qualification.

Using an SSIP Forum pre-qualification scheme for a Stage 1 assessment enables clients to concentrate on Stage 2 of the procurement process. The SSIP Forum members are also committed to advise and influence clients, contractors and consultants about reasonable interpretation and appropriateness of health and safety competence standards in UK schemes.

An important feature of the SSIP Forum is the HSE’s message that a buyer can be confident a supplier who is registered or accredited as compliant or approved with an SSIP member has been assessed to the Core Criteria standard (stage 1).

The buyer, having verified their status, will only then need to focus on the project or job specific assessment (stage 2).

For further information, please contact BCSA Peter Walker on Tel: 01325 366328 or email pete.walker@steelconstruction.org