Hi Claire I have one, if you PM your email I will send it to you - you can adjust to your specific company needs. let meknow.

May I make a plea that you consider having two such questionnaires? Obviously you will need the detailed one for those who will be carrying out work on site for you. But consider the following:
We are a small consultancy of three partners. We run open courses, held in hotels, conference centres, etc. We frequently receive a questionnaire to complete so that an employee of a company can book on one of our courses. For example, we recently had to complete a 20 page questionnaire, obviously designed for the purpose for which you are developing yours. At least 90% of the form was not applicable!
All this just so that one employee could come on one of our courses!

And we bleat about Government red tape!!!

Chris

Where's a "like" button when you need one?

Chris, if more of us start to think like this we may start to get some sanity and H&S reality back in to contracting.

I recently assisted a client achieve accreditation to one of the many schemes so that they could get on to a tender list for some quite low-risk activities. The number of documents that was required was bordering on lunacy - and then the next main contractor wanted them to be on a different scheme! Drawing attention to SSIP did eventually work but more frustration for my client in the meantime.

chris.packham - The practice by which companies require your organisation to complete their questionnaires before they send employees on your training courses strikes me as both bizarre and sad.

Can any other forum users who provide or otherwise have involvement with external training courses say if they also receive such questionnaires?

Furthermore, is there any indication as to why some/many employers are asking external training providers to complete questionnaires? Such questionnaires seem wholly inappropriate regarding employees going on training courses, especially ones held at conventional types of venues. Could it be because HR professionals and/or others have wildly misinterpreted company requirements/policies regarding what sort of pre-contract information should be sought from contractors?

Also, can any training providers say if they have politely queried why they've been sent such questionnaires, and what sort of replies they got from what categories of people? In some cases it's foreseeable that clerical/admin. assistants simply reply to say that it's a standard company requirement before any employee goes away on any course.

Also, do any forum users know or suspect that their organisations routinely require external training providers to complete such questionnaires? If so, do you intend to do anything about it? You could well boost your credibility by challenging unnecessary bureaucracy and thereby saving your company and training providers from wasting valuable time and effort on such questionnaires!

Woah! Hold your horses (or should that be beefburgers)!

The whole concept of commercial PQQ schemes, and the mutual acceptance of minimum standards via SSIP is to avoid prospective contractors having to repeatedly waste time and effort in filling-in client based questionnaires.
I absolutely agree that these schemes are often far from perfect, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water?
I recommend an introductory statement to your pro-forma which makes clear that any contractor demonstrating current compliance or accreditation via a recognised commercial PQQ scheme, or who can evidence current audit of safety management systems by an accredited auditor, need not complete the questionnaire.
There is a degree of caveat here though. Not all PQQ systems are the same, and the baseline elements of PAS 91 doesn't specifically cover asbestos awareness training. I think it prudent to always require a response on CAR2012 Reg 10 compliance.
As for the incorrect application of contractor PQQ processes to training providers and the like - that's just laziness in my opinion. The Client organisation should have a clear definition of what a contractor (as opposed to a service provider) is.

I should have added that whilst PAS 91 provides a decent question set and gives indication of the evidence that should be provided, it doesn't provide a set of objective evaluation metrics.

Claire - I'm with Ron.

CDM 2007 introduced a new aspect to competence by specifically prohibiting each such duty holder from accepting an appointment unless they are competent.

However, concerns remain that competence assessments are all too often extremely bureaucratic and resource costly for both clients and their prospective supply chains.

Suppliers are asked to respond to lengthy documents in which many of the questions are often of limited, if any, assistance in demonstrating competence.

Instead, paragraph 205 of the CDM Approved Code of Practice envisages that in effect a supplier should “self-certify” their competence by demonstrating this against a set of “core criteria” with a “Stage 1” general assessment, and “Stage 2” to demonstrate its experience of work similar to that being procured.

These core criteria which were agreed between HSE and the construction sector are set out in Appendix 4 of ACOP (Stage 1 – QQ1-14, and Stage 2 – Q15). This template enables a supplier to compile a standard list of responses to the Stage 1 questions, and supplement this with a Stage 2 specific response to demonstrate that its experience is appropriate to the work being applied for.

An alternate approach which also reduces bureaucracy is to ascertain whether a supplier is registered with a member of the Safety Schemes in Procurement Forum (www.ssip.org.uk) such as the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (www.chas.gov.uk) initially set up by a number of local authorities. Where a supplier is registered with an SSIP member, it can be deemed to have satisfied the Stage 1 core criteria.

That's it in a nutshell. People are trying to apply CDM type systems to non-CDM type work including consultancy, training, and research activities. We have been asked to carry out pre- bid questionnaires (full CDM type asking about everything including working at height, use of work equipment) for people counting seagulls on a rubbish tip and we were asked why we were not part of the prequalification scheme for municipal contractors when all we were offering them was our training suite.
I would not have been a problem if they asked sensible, useful questions. Instead I get things like describe your H&S management system in two lines; Give us a copy of your risk assessment? (no explanation of what risk assessment for what activity, just the risk assessment).
When you get contact the office handling the bid they just say it is a standard form ALL contractors have to fill in. They have no idea who wrote or even in some cases who will eventually read it. So when people complain about red tape and pointless ‘elf and safety’ questionnaires the finger can be pointed at industry taking short cuts as well as the usual suspects.

Do any forum users who receive inappropriate questionnaires respond to them in a bold manner by returning them uncompleted but with their front pages clearly annotated (e.g. in red ink using a felt pen) with something like "Please explain why this questionnaire is relevant in any way (e.g. to your employee attending our training course)" ?

If organisations which send out daft/inappropriate questionnaires were to receive sufficient numbers of defiant responses, perhaps their senior people would realise/learn sooner or later that they're wasting the time and other scarce resources of both their own organisations and those of others !

Jon

My suggestion was admittedly facile and easy to make but obviously far harder to implement and involves the considerable risk that recipients of inappropriate questionnaires, etc. could lose work. However, if organisations have entrenched inappropriate/stupid systems, they ought to be challenged. Therefore, can any forum users describe other methods they've used and found to be effective as challenges? One possibility for OS&H professionals is to inform their senior managers about daft systems used by other organisations so that they can query them during discussions with their counterparts in the other organisations. The message will be the same but have much more 'clout', impact, etc., coming from people with high status.

Graham, where does one go when the edict is issued by very high authority? I have serious concerns about a recent edict (Policy Statement) issued by the Scottish Government no less on a similar issue.
My thread at
http://forum.iosh.co.uk/...spx?g=posts&t=107882
refers.
It seems that those with vested interests are holding sway. HSE seem to be caught in the middle.

The matter of inappropriate questionnaires and other daft systems is a vital one to be discussed and tackled. Even if OS&H professionals haven't been involved in their inception, there's a high likelihood that people in many other roles perceive (wrongly) that OS&H is to blame for them. Therefore, if OS&H professionals can take whatever opportunities they can to challenge daft systems, they will surely do something worthwhile to reduce real burdens on organisations. They will also help to raise their own credibility and ultimately the general reputation of OS&H.

Another observation: It's a shame that this thread has received relatively few viewings and responses compared for example with the beefburger thread which began only a day before this one. The beefburger thread mostly provides some good and welcome transient humour, but the subject of this one is very important for OS&H.

How about this - I was given a PQQ to complete yesterday - today is practical completion. This has been an 8 month project. We have worked with the principal contractor on several projects before.
Over half of the questionnaire is about prestart procedures which I will not be signing up to - now
I agree with a lot of what has been said but don't use the PQQ as a tick box exercise for your project it makes the information meaningless. I try very hard to ensure our staff work safely and maintain a healthy and injury free time at work.