Posted By Crim
Health and safety regulations contain many references to competence and ensuring competence. To that end I have a tried and tested form I use when checking competence of contractors and usually have no problem having the form completed and returned, complete with examples of risk assessments etc. that the form asks for.

I have just recently been criticised for asking too many questions, this by a contractor who states that he has never been asked for this information before, and a Project Manager who thought I was being "over the top". I wrote to him that the sub contractor was not competent and should not be allowed to work on site.

My question is how far should we go to ensure a contractor is competent and what information can we ask to be provided to ensure we are complying with the relevant regulations?

Posted By Ian G Hutchings
Hi Crim

I tend to have a three tier approach based on risk exposure to the business (the client). This way not everyone gets asked the same questions. Depending on numbers of contractors a brief visit or audit can throw up more information than just the form.

I wouldn't usually ask questions about specific legislation unless for example they were an asbestos or confined space contractor. Their example risk assessment and plans will usually indicate how well they at least understand the hazards involved.

To get a consistent and competent supply chain client companies can assist to a degree and will then get a better understanding and assurance. A good question often relates to how they get 'competent advice'. Some may appoint someone decent and others take short cuts and have a crack themselves. One example I saw was risk assessments for standing too close to a microwave oven but none for transport on the site!

All the best

Ian

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
Crim,

There is only only one question that your organisation need to ask.

Please describe and provide evidence to show how your organisation meets the ‘core criteria for demonstration of competence’ as outlined in Appendix 4 of the HSC publication L144 ‘Managing health and safety in construction’?

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
Crim,

My question is quite simple and is one that a competent contractor's statutory H&S assistant should simply be able assist them with, however as I suspect you will probably find this quite challenging, you can still employ the contractor providing they work under the supervision of a competent person.

See paragraph 43 of L144!

Posted By Glen Coe
Good question !

I have always suggested that the highest risk is imported with the cheapest contractor...

I adopted a tier system, where each contractor is assessed on a safety criticality basis, such as cleaning contractors would be lower risk than lifting contractors etc.

I would be wary of how you pursue it though. I always take the approach that we are checking the contractors ability to demonstrate competence. Because people may have doing the work for decades but have no demonstrable qualifications to compare against expected expected standards such as ECITB, OPITO etc.

If you have no formal system for assessing contractors the Norwegian system is pretty good.

http://www.standard.no/p...66/9_10704_0/S-006r2.pdf

In the meantime unless the contractor can demonstrate competence of their employees we do not allow them to access our sites.

In the meantime, once you have established competence, you may wish to review interfacing arrangements with the contractors, so everyone is aware of the management system expectations.

Step change, developed this good basic guidance.

http://stepchangeinsafet...sourcesitem.aspx?ID=3176

It all depends upon your companies approach to managing risk...

Ps if you are suspicious then audit before you award contracts.

Cheers
GC

Posted By Ron Hunter
Crim,

Part of the answer has to be "it depends". It depends who 'we' are or who we are working on behalf of?
A client should apply a pre-qualification questionnaire process for short listing of contractors, and one of the questions on that should ask how they in turn checks the competency of any appointments.
A closer "stage two" scrutiny by the client of Project specific responses, method statements, intial construction phase plan can take place at tender response.
Thereafter the client should take reasonable steps during the project to ensure that the contractor does what he says he would (and what he priced for!).

Generally, there can be a danger of "going to deep" and dabbling into what should be the principal contractor's responsibility to ensure the competence of his appointments.
Rejecting outright one of his proposed appointments is fraught with difficulty, contractual and otherwise - although I would support a client who had previous evidence of poor performance and did not want any particular 'subby' on his Project. Should the Client maintain and provide to prospective Principals at the tender stage a list of those Organisations to be excluded? That might work.Clients can also set (via contract) global requirements such as CHAS and other industry standard requirements to be applied to ALL Project appointments.

From a construction Project perspective, I have recently noticed some CDM-Cs dabbling too deep into checking competencies (or asking clients to prove how they confirm competency of their appoitnments!), apparently missing the point that CDM-Cs only have to ADVISE on competency WHEN REQUESTED by other Project Duty Holders.

Posted By Ron Hunter
I just had a brief scan of the NORSOK standard which Glen Coe refers to above.
Under 2.2. (Policy and Objectives), the following statement is to be scored as "unacceptable":

"Employees and management express disbelief with respect to the possibility of completely
avoiding accidents and losses." !!!

Posted By Bob Youel

talk to the contractors previous clients!

Posted By Lee Mac
Crim,

From working for a PC I often used to come against it with a few of our subbies, however, after investigating why I saw that the company as a whole needed a uniform approach to the H&S standards.

It is as simple as this, if you have asked for something that is a legitimate request, then stick to your guns mate. In my experience, if you can demonstrate the reasoning, whether you use the moral, legal or financial argument- although it sometimes takes the latter to make Project Management sit back and take most notice, it usually gets the point across.

Regarding the sub-contractor- bring him/her in, alone, talk him through the reasoning behind your request- go through the 3 key elements mentioned previously and demonstrate how it would positively affect his/her business.
Highlight avenues available that may assist them in addressing your request.

If that doesn't work then bring it to the attention of one of your Directors, to add a little weight.

Feel free to email me if you need further information.


Lee

Posted By John Murphy
Anon 1234

Perhaps you should look at the Acceptable Use Guideline number 4. Being critical as you are "some of the schemes that are out there are not worth the paper they are written on" and not saying which is effectively condemning them all.

Regards

John

Posted By GeoffB4
John, I'd like to think all schemes of competence are fit for purpose but just like anon1234, I also know of one of those on the list which IMO do not properly assess contractors. They may assess the documents provided by contractors (or their H&S consultants) but they don't monitor the activities of the contractors and thus the contractor competencies on site.

I note your reference to AUGs, (I also note you haven't mentioned your involvement in one of the schemes mentioned?) but I'm sure the topic can be continued without any more suggestions/hints of suppressing our freedom of speech.

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
John,

Would your scheme be happy to undertake an assessment against a prepared statement of CDM competence based upon the criteria found within appendix 4 of the ACOP for the 2007 CDM Regulations if this has the necessary evidence to support this.

In short if we provide you with the above, do we have to yet again go through another lengthy process of answering questions?

Posted By Andy Brazier
Working in human factors I have a particular interest in competence.

It occurs to me that most of what is being discussed here has little to do with 'checking competence,' which I believe is the point Adrian Watson is making above. You may argue that the questionnaire approach is at least checking 'competence systems,' but even that may bit a bit of a generous assessment.

There can be a number of reasons why a company cannot or will not answer your questions. It may be that they are very competent at doing their job and so would give a very good end result, but left to their own devices may not follow H&S good practices. In this case there may be good reasons to use the company, but for the client to take on a role in managing H&S.

Conversely a company that is good at answering the questions may well be very good at managing H&S, but poor at their trade. You can trust them to work safely with minimum supervision, but will be disappointed with the end result.

Finally, you may find a company that has people who are good at answering all the questions but these never get involved with the work. This is probably the worst case scenario.

I'm not saying you should stop using questionnaires, just don't fool yourself that you are checking competence. You need at least need to have robust auditing in place.

Andy

Posted By anon1234
John Murphy,

AUG4 is precisely why I didn't name them.

All I was trying to point out is that don't just blindly trust these schemes as not all of them will be able to assure you on the competence of the contractor. Personally, I think it is better to undertake your own competence checks as you can then tailor these to meet the specific of the contract you are letting. However, this is notalways possible as some businesses do not have the appropriate level of resourse available in-house for thsi so need to use other means of doing this - so just check what you are getting from the various schemes out there, as some are a lot better than others and some, IMO, are totally inadequate.

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
The problem with competence questionnaires is that they can fail to measure competence in the same way that IQ testing can also fail as a measure of intelligence.

I also work for a 250+ architecture practice and my desk is simply gets flooded with these lengthy questionnaires, preventing me from getting on with my day job. In order to tackle this problem we have developed our own competence statement together with the necessary evidence to support this.

Arguably competence questionnaires should now be thoroughly discouraged in favour of requests for competence statements.

Are there any students out there who wish this up as a dissertation subject?

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Ron

I think it is more that we need the contractor to provide suitable evidence of competence in a usable format that suits how he manages his organisation. The UK wide schemes show little overlap and yet again rely very much on questionnaires alone. I do not believe the spirit of CDM 07 is served by these lists of questions after which there is often no further assessment undertaken by the employing organisation.

Bob

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Ron

I was also trying to avoid CDM as the competence vetting process is universal and the principle is that the organisation demonstratees how it is competent

Bob