Posted By Jim Walker
Can anyone enlighten me about the following, I might have had my head buried in the sand but this is the first time I’ve come across this subject.

We are being pressured by a client to join the SAFEcontractor scheme. It seems to be a fairly good idea, my concern is it is run by a commercial organisation –National Britannia. So is it just a money making set-up that is likely to fade away or will it grow into a nationally recognised way of working?
I’ve had a look at the web site and am not exactly impressed with the client list they have signed up.

I’ve also seen references to IOSH being behind this – any comments?

The thing that is putting me off at the moment is the threats from the client (big multinational) about being frozen out of future work. We pay an annual fee so that we may enjoy the privilege of continuing to do business with them. If they are the only client to adopt this scheme we might just “let them go”

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
Jim,

There are a number of these schemes about now and I have a number of concerns and these are:

1. Ethical.
If a company sub-contracts its vetting scheme and then sub-contracts the cost of this scheme, who is the client of this scheme, is it the organisation being vetted or is it the organisation who instructed the go-ahead for this scheme in the first place and is there even a potential conflict of interest?

2. Cost.
With a number of these schemes about, these can have a serious cost implication for the smaller organisations which are paying for these. As an example £2-3,000 in a safety budget for a small organisation can go a long way with training etc.

3. Quality.
Do these schemes have a process of quality control? I suspect that the majority of these don’t. It also surprises me over the inconsistency in assessment between these different schemes. Do these schemes have procedures (other than the questions) which you are assessed against? Is there a document control system? Do they internally audit their schemes? Do they have formal appeals procedures?

4. Competence.
What is the competence of the personnel who are undertaking these assessments and how competent is the organisation? I think that you may be quite surprised by the poor knowledge and experience of the personnel undertaking these assessments. For example one organisation told me that “there is no such thing as BS 8800”.

5. Security and confidentiality.
Is the information which you have supplied secure and not passes between departments within larger consultancies who undertake these assessments. How do they protect the copyright of documentation which they have received?

6. No national standard.
I do not believe that there is a national standard for these schemes and should there be one now?

7. External auditing.
Are any of these schemes externally audited?

8. Complaints and appeal.
Which organisation do you appeal or complain to, if you feel that you have been unfairly assessed?

9. Cross approval of these vetting schemes.
If there was a national standard for contractor vetting schemes, then perhaps one approved by one organisation, this would apply to others.

I feel that you are right to question these schemes in detail and perhaps these should now be now be pre-vetted by the organisations they are about to assess?

If there are references to IOSH being behind the scheme that you quoted, please could you quote these? I am sure that IOSH is not formally supporting this scheme.

Posted By John Murphy
SafeContractor is a scheme run by National Britannia. It, like SHEQUAL (EC Harris) ; Sinclair Vetted Directory and Achilles amongst others are commercial entities that run client list on behalf of the client. I manage a scheme run by the public sector on a not for profit basis. It is called the Contractors Health and Safety (CHAS) Assessment scheme (www.chas.gov.uk). CHAS is endorsed by IOSH and supported by the HSC and HSE amongst others. CHAS has a number of objectives but the over-arching one is one of a professional desire to help small and medium sized businesses who want to work in the public sector to demonstrate compliance and adequate management of basic health and safety. Equally important is our desire to avoid duplicate applications (and assessments) by applying a set of common standards so that a contractor who has been (H&S) approved by Highland Council would be acceptable to Hampshire County Council. (This duplication costs industry £millions of wasted public money every year.

To find out more about CHAS please visit http://www.chas.gov.uk/about.asp. There is also a section on FAQ's by members and subscribers. Others who may wish to know more can contact me direct.

To address Arran's point where CHAS is concerned (and only CHAS):

1. Ethical Issue.
CHAS currently relates only to pre-qualification. When a contractor is short-listed for work they will be subjected to a second stage assessment. This relates specifically to the project they are applying for. The duty to determine competence rests with the client and cannot be absolved to a third party (as I am sure you are aware). We make this clear to our members)

2. Cost.
I am aware of one particular scheme mentioned above that charge £2000 per annum for registration as they have more than 250 employees. This is disgraceful in my view.
Public sector organisations such as local authority are not allowed charge contracts for assessments and therefore the majority of applications to CHAS are done on a no cost basis. Where a fee is charged it is £85 +VAT for a company with five or more employees and £35 +VAT for a company with less than 5 employees. A company who fails an assessment is given written feedback and an opportunity to re-apply at no additional cost.

3. Quality.
The CHAS standards are clear and transparent and in the public domain (available from the web-site). Whilst an assessment is subjective, our standards are objective. We have a quality control process whereby 5-7% of all approved applications and reviews are subjected to a QA check. We have had two appeal in two years and both have been sent to a Member MIOSH (RSP) and the findings up- held.

4. Competence.
Assessors are all safety professionals or others who have demonstrated competence by submission of portfolio. The vast majority of our assessors are safety professionals and Members of IOSH.

5. Security and confidentiality.
Our database is accessed by members only. Our members treat all information in confidence but in the same way that good health and safety management during contracts is applauded and noted in the database so too is any action taken by a member to suspend or remove them from their list.
6. No national standard.
Have a look at the standard we use in CHAS. It has been established by safety professionals and developed over the last five years. The national standards of compliance are described in various ACOP's and Guidance . We have bought them together into one document.

7. External auditing.
I suspect that none of them are externally audited. CHAS when in a position to do so financially will be seeking to do this.

8. Complaints and appeal.
Covered earlier.

9. Cross approval of these vetting schemes.
I have been asked by the Department of Trade & Industry to investigate reducing the burden on contractors by sharing information. I met with SafeContractor and await a meeting with EC Harris (twice postponed). More on this if and when anything develops.

Posted By James Ostler


I feel it is now appropriate to respond to the various discussions about SAFEcontractor, in my capacity as Divisional Managing Director of National Britannia Ltd, who operate the SAFEcontractor scheme.

SAFEcontractor was established a number of years ago as a direct result of a number of our major clients needing assistance with assessing contractors health & safety arrangements, but to also bring benefits to contractors. The scheme was originally known as Supplyline, we re-branded last year. It is most definitely a permanent scheme. The clients listed on the web site are simply a selection, not the full list. The majority of clients are large organisations that use numerous contractors, and across industry sectors, including facilities management, commercial property, food manufacturing, retail, and leisure.

The original concept still applies today, to bring benefit to clients and contractors alike. It is not simply a question of paying to be able to work for a client. We are all working towards the same objectives of improving health & safety standards.

To address the 9 points raised by Arran, specific to SAFEcontractor:

1. Ethical. SAFEcontractor is operated for the benefit of clients and contractors, and I don’t believe there are any conflicts of interest. Both parties gain. Clients know the contractor assessment is being completed to an appropriate standard and it relieves them of the task. Clients will also soon have access to current information on contractors insurance and CIS details. Contractors benefit by only being subject to a single assessment. We also provide as much help as possible to contractors wishing to improve their H&S arrangements, though without compromising the standards to be achieved. We are also now introducing further benefits for contractors to provide added value, such as a Safety Newsletter, legal helpline, etc.

2. Cost. SAFEcontractor is from £100 per annum, and it reduces when accreditation is achieved.

3. Quality. The technical standards are high and we operate extremely stringent procedures including quality control. Standards, the audit process, quality audits, etc are all fully documented. SAFEcontractor is a professional health & safety scheme operated by a large risk management consultancy, and I insist on high quality throughout the process. Our terms and conditions for contractors do include an appeals procedure.

A high percentage of contractors do initially fail to achieve accreditation. It is however in everyone’s interests to improve their standards, therefore we provide various support including:
- access to our health & safety information and advice centre
- specific training courses
- special support provided for those with <5 employees.


4. Competence. The auditors are all health & safety professionals, the manager and senior auditor are both ex enforcement officers. I carry the ultimate responsibility for the scheme and as a member of IOSH, a Registered Safety Practitioner and Environmental Health Officer, I believe we do achieve high standards.

5. Security and confidentiality. Though SAFEcontractor is part of a large consultancy, the scheme is stand alone. All data is processed in accordance with the DPA and terms and conditions of the scheme to which contractors sign up. As operators of two major HSE contracts we do take this issue very seriously.

6. National standards. It would help if there was one, we have developed and maintain a SAFEcontractor standard, which is continually reviewed.

7. External auditing. H&S is outside the UKAS ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, therefore we operate the following. Our clients undertake external audits of the scheme, the scheme is included within our ISO9001 Certification, and pier reviews are undertaken by our H&S Consultancy.

8. Complaints and appeals. Our terms and conditions for contractors do include an appeals procedure.

9. Cross approval. I welcomed the approach from CHAS, though was unable to agree to a cross approval arrangement. Our standards are specific for different trades, to recognise that H&S issues vary across trades. CHAS does not consider such trade specific health & safety issues, therefore I was unfortunately unable to accept their standards.


There is perhaps one final point to clarify. SAFEcontractor is a third party scheme assessing health & safety arrangements of contractors. CHAS is, to the best of my understanding, primarily an information sharing scheme, audits undertaken by clients are shared with other clients. Other schemes have a variety of other objectives, for example I believe Achilles is primarily to facilitate the tendering process.

I should be pleased to discuss any of these points further, my telephone number is 029 20 852852.

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
James Ostler,

Thank you for your detailed response to this thread.

I agree with the point that you made in paragraph 6 “National standards. It would help if there was one”. I amongst other safety practitioners and contractors would welcome a British Standard for Contractor Assessments particularly third party assessment schemes.

Would you be interested in helping establish such a Standard?

Posted By John Murphy
National Standrads - Visit http://www.chas.gov.uk/Downloads/Appendix2B.doc
The CHAS scheme has developed clear, transparent standrads for pre-qualification of contractors to approved/select list. Impotantly CHAS is a not for profit organisation and is non-commercial and so has no "axe to grind" with contractors. We work where possible to provide, through the application of these standrads, to not only raise the standards of compliance and management of health and safety by helping contractors to achieve the standards but also to share thatinformation so that we can avoid duplication of effort for contractors and users of approved lists by negating the need for replicated assessments, and the costs involved in that.

CHAS is "managed" by a number of public sector safety and procurement professionals from across the UK and has representatives from the TUC (GMB and UCATT); Trades Associations (FMB, NFB and UKHCA). HSE are co-opted members of the Group and have been involved from the outset.

Our standrads are in the public domain, anyone can download them from our website where, in one example (appendix 2B), the assesors objectives are clearly described along with the standrads they seek. An applicant can therefore carry out a self audit before applying. If an applicant fails to acheive the standrad we guide them to IOSH for advice rather than to commercial entities. No assesor is allowed to act as their agent or adviser as this is clearly a serious conflict of interest.

Our membership is open to any public or private sector organisation who are users of large numbers of contractors on their approved or select list. In January We were very pleased to welcome Alfred McAlpine as our first major contractor to join the scheme.

If you wish to make constructive commment about our standards the management group would be pleased to receive and consider them.

Whilst the standards are copyrighted I would be prepared to discuss their use with any like minded organisation.

John Murphy
CHAS scheme Manager