Hi All, My company is in the construction industry, and we require our subcontractors to hold certain cards and qualifications prior to joining our approved list (CSCS, UKATA Cat A Asbestos Awareness, IOSH WS, IOSH SS and Construction Skills SMSTS). Another company within our group is involved in facilities management and reactive maintenance for a number of different clients; we're in the process of reviewing their subcontractor competence standards and I wondered if any of you have experience in this area, and could suggest key qualifications which we could use to prove competence? Any suggestions would be great. Thanks! Alex

Do not forget that all these cards and training programmes do NOT make any person or organisation competent. They are simply a small part oof the picture. You need to be looking for things such as Ongoing assessment of needs CPD in some form - yes even for construction operatives Monitoring of performance Performance on site Attitudes and Behaviours towards other persons/organisations Do all this and you are coming close to the comfort zone. Bob

Cheers Keith. The electrical / gas qualifications are covered by the CSCS / ECS schemes, as well as Gas Safe (audit of which is undertaken by a specialist consultant). Essentially, is CSCS an acceptable means of proving competence within an FM environment, and what appropriate passport schemes are available?

Appendix 4 for me does not truly measure competence as the matters referred to wander away from the point and omit some key areas. There is very little concerning the monitoring of the workforce - it merely refers to procedures. I could go on but I find it very disappointing that the HSE have ignored documents that they produced before 2007 wrt competence in favour of this wishy washy appendix. If you google Competence Management on the HSE site then some good documents come up. Bob

Bob is absolutely spot on. The days of flashing a CSCS card to prove competence have well gone, although a lot of Companies still do not understand the meaning of "proof of competence" We recently went through a Legionella Control Audit and we were forced to produce Supervision Competence checks. These involve a proper record of whether an operative can follow instruction, work as part of a team, understand Chlorine dosing etc etc. The Supervisor has to check and sign these off for all activities and they are very important should anything go pear shaped. They can also be re-inforced with Competence Assurance questionnaires or quizes, done as a toolbox talk, or through photographic evidence. It certainly opened my eyes to what we should be recording, and it should in my opinion be kept seperate from Training Records.

Alex Just to let you know if you consider the IOSH passport (Working safely course) when you purchase the course you can choose the award type, as follows; Full certificate, with no expiry, or; ID card with an expiry. if you are working under multiple sites go for the ID card as this is excepted by the HSE and a competance card, like the CSCS. the certificate is not accepted even though they are the same course. I work for a multi-national construction company and the only contractors allowed to hold this type or card is BT and Openreach under the UKCG policies. If you need any extra help please PM me.

The onus is on the prospective contractor to demonstrate his competence to you. If contractors are routinely asked to jump through various hoops, they'll no doubt do that - but does it ensure competency, or does it all degenerate into a "tick-box" approach. You're hands may well "be tied" regarding CSCS, but those above need to understand the very limited scope of that in the wider 'competency' and 'undertaking' contexts. I'm not a fan of card schemes (you may have guessed). IOSH Working Safely? How would provide a measure of competency? I am a fan of pre-qual schemes though. Adopt that (SSIP etc) and take the angst out of pqq, free up your time to focus on the project specific response from the contractors on your list and to monitor their performance on-task - to make sure they do what they said they'd do. Only then will you (as a client) be in any position to measure the competence of your appointments.