When approving a contractor, I have come across someone who is Safe Contractor accredited, however I am not satisfied with their risk assessment and accompanying documents.

We are also Safe Contractor accredited and whilst doing so,  you are only checked on activited you note on the forms, so in theory, a contractor could exclude all dangerous activities, yet have someone assume they are safe because they have an accredtiation.  

How do others deal with assessing contractors and with contractors who have recognised accreditations?

We had to become Safe Contractor accredited for a client.  That's why I know it's possible to exclude activities.

I have just told the contractor that it is our policy to make checks anyway and we require further information. The problem is, the work is installing signs at height, so I need to be absolutely sure they are competent.

As Jodie says, if you are not  happy then don't approve them. A lot of PQQs will ask for SSIP accreditations in place of asking the same questions. i.e. "if you can supply a current SSIP certificate then skip question 1-10..."

However, for us this just gets them on the approved contractors list for our organisation; and approving a contractor, does not mean that I will automatically approve any further documentation such as RAMS, etc. each time they are submitted.

Make comments and send them back for revision. Their next submission should be Revision 1 and so on anfd so forth until you are happy. If you do this now, next time you work witth them their paperwork will be more suitable for your needs.

If I am dealing with smaller organisations whose paperwork is really not up to scratch then I may spend some time mentoring them.

Edited by user 25 April 2017 10:18:02(UTC)  | Reason: Spelling error

We became SafeContractor approved because one client required us to and we've been accredited now for 6 or 7 years. From my perspective things have changed since our first attempt at accreditation and the burden of proof if you like is much lower now than when we started, I'd agree the Achillies audit is a much better indicator of standards and thats reflected in the price and depth of the audit.

Having said that for peace of mind I'd much rather review a Contractors documents and qualifications myself and make my own decisions on their quality ! I appreciate though that not everyone will have the time to do that

Originally Posted by: Shopland23872

I would recommend SSIP accreditation , that is a very strict and detailed assessment and certification process, there is no way any company would get through that with sub standard documentation. They are very strict and very thorough, so any contractor who has this accreditation has earned it.

I think you are misunderstanding what SSiP is. Safecontractor IS an SSiP accreditation ,

SSiP is essentially an umbrella scheme which covers most of the main H&S accreditations: SMAS, CHAS, Safecontractor, Exor, Altis etc etc. I wouldn't necessarily call any of them "thorough" having seen first hand the sorts of contractors these assessments bodies certify.

The idea of SSiP was to stop one client insisting that subcontractors had SMAS whilst the next one asked for CHAS and so on. With SSiP you can present one of around 20 different "SSiP stamped" certs to your client and they'll be happy. At least, that's the theory. In reality, many still insist on specific accreditations meaning that some firms (like mine) still have to maintain 4 or 5 differnt (yet essentially the same) SSiP accreditations.

Edited by user 26 April 2017 11:57:29(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

We had a client ask us to get safe contractor to go on their site, we said NO.

They are still a client.