Posted By K8 I have been asked by my boss to carry out an assessment on a potential supplier. Can anyone give me some advice on what sort of information I should be requesting? If anyone knows of an online pro-forma questionnaire I would be very grateful.

Posted By Chris Packham We frequently receive questionnaires from potential clients, but they usually are limited to financial/administrative topics, i.e. what liability insurance do we carry, payment terms, bank details (for BACS) etc. This is standard stuff and your financial department should be able to advise you on this. If the questionnaire is to evaluate the supplier's suitability for a particular product or service, then I suggest the content will depend on just what you are expecting the supplier to supply or do. Occasionally we do receive a questionnaire attempting to evaluate our expertise in our particular field. Usually we have to write back pointing out that most of the questions are simply not relevant to what we provide. At the same time we do provide documentation and information about us to assist the potential client in evaluating us as a supplier. Chris

Posted By Barrie Etter IF YOU SEND ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS I'LL FORWARD A COPY OF OUR SUPPLIER QUESTIONNAIRE. SECTION 1 ONLY, FOR CONTRACTORS IE ONE MAN BANDS DOING REPAIRS. SECTION ONE & TWO SMALL SUPPLIERS THAT JUST KNOW WHAT A QUALITY MANUAL IS AND SECTION THREE COVERS THE BIGGER COMPANIES THAT SHOULD KNOW BETTER. I DON'T THINK ITS' PERFECT BUT WILL GIVE YOU A STARTING POINT FOR ADAPTATION. REGARDS, BARRIE

Posted By Ian G Hutchings K8 I recommend a system that is risk based. So for example you have a brief assessment that tells you what you need from a supplier. This then varies between the people that deliver paper to the office to the people that fix the roof or do more hazardous work. Ensure that you ask questions about what they do proactively to manage safety as well as how many incidents they have had. If possible it works well to have interviews so that you can really find out what they are about. If possible it is even better if you can go to their workplace and other places they work to assess them first. I did some work in a certain industry a number of years ago. I found that about 80% of the suppliers who were 'approved' were, in my opinion, not capable of fully understanding how to implement or maintain a robust safety management system. People will tick the boxes to get the work. There are companies that have OHSAS etc. etc. that are poor at managing safety. All I'm saying is the initial paper is a very small part of contractor assurance. It is just a very early filter. All the best Ian

Posted By Dave Wilson Best way is to ask. Are you CHAS accredited, this is an assessment scheme run by the HSE and if you are accredited it means the HSE have undertaken an audit of your H&S within your company. |You can also download the Application which asks all the questions from www.chas.gov.uk If you are National Britannia SAFEcontractor then you can get Chas without going through the process Download the forms mate and you have your answer

Posted By Andrew Rushton This is true. But the idea is right, look for industry safety accreditations. Saves you the leg work to a great extent provided their accreditation matches what you require of the supplier. References from other clients are also good. Also do a search on the HSE notices database.