I suppose what you have to prove initially is that you are acting as a competent person for your client companies. I would do this firstly before you do any work for those companies who have received your business card. It reads to me that you are working on their behalf without having some sort of contract in place and they are benefitting from your involvement. CHAS / Constructionline / Safecontractor / VETAS are tricky contractor assessment schemes to deal with, even when the competent person is employed internally within an organisation, so you really need to prove that you are working on behalf of yor client. John

You are correct ratman when you say that someone should look into the workings of these "official organisations". Its organisations such as these with their pedantic assessors and rules which lack common sense which give us all a bad name!

What about those consultants who train companies from little or no safety knowledge and then set them up to a standard that CAN be audited and monitored in the future, and also possibly persuade managers to undergo safety training as part of any application? Surely there are benefits to the company and the scheme to have proper consultants keeping work processes and employees in safe work conditons that can be checked?

I posted this somewhere else earlier: "Me, I love a good questionnaire, much more fun than actually doing any safety management, trying to persuade some remote box-checker that I am already doing it. I got 18001 accreditation from a UKAS third party so that I could fill out fewer questionnaires and what happened? Even the ones who used to say "send us your accreditation" started asking for evidence. Now there's a bunch of red tape ready for shredding. If only we could get recognition for just the one system. Discuss!" And here you all are discussing it! Paterson, we're not trying to undermine the schemes, merely pointing out that we seem to have a shared experience that they could be better. Actually, on reflection, you are quite correct in what you say about CHAS and Constructionline, they do cross pollinate and also with Achilles, I think. As I said above, a bit of unification would be good and I particularly wish my externally UKAS verified 18001 carried some weight! Perhaps I should point out here that I actually find most of the other accreditation schemes a breeze after persuading a UKAS verified auditor that all the bits are in place. If you want to be sure you have covered all the angles, that the way to go boys (and girls). Takes a bit of doing mind............ Paul

In all of the discussion so far there has been an implicit assumption that these schemes could have the resources available to do more than they are already undertaking. Indeed I think the saturation point has been reached where there are too few competent assessors available to undertake the primary assessment let alone follow up audits. The HSE has been very involved in these schemes but even they recognise the numbers limitations. The consequence is that many organisations will always be outside of any scheme. This leads to an inexorable conclusion that clients and their advisors must develop their own assessment schemes and use them in all cases and not just for some. In other words I will take up Paterson and state that perhaps their day is soon to end and clients willtake responsibility for whom they employ. Bob

John I take your view completely and would also remind people that there is only a very finite number of chartered members and the assessimg organisations simply do not have the numbers to cope. Bob