Posted By Drew
Hi everyone Drew here!

Does anyone have any guidance on what percentage weighting you may give to Health, Safety, Welfare and Environmental arrangements when evaluating an Invitation To Tender from prospective Contractors with regard to their overall bid for a construction project?

I'm pushing for 35 to 40% of the overall evaluation of a bid to be based on their HSW&E write up in the bid, outlining their performance and previous track record.

That would leave a 60 to 65% weighting on other aspects such as price / resource level commitment, LD's and other commercial stuff!

Any views or experience from anyone would be welcome with regard to my thoughts? My infrastructure and commercial colleauges are aghast as they only expected 15 to 20% weighting for HSW&E

Posted By Descarte
I would disagree and say it depends on the industry and location, ie north sea oil and gas H+S would be taken above cost and a company with a accident/injury frequency rate too high would be discounted on just that alone!

Posted By Michelle L Dugard
Have you thought about using H&S as part of the pre-tender filtering rather than as such as massive part of the weighting process. ie: Ask to see accident reports/records, insurances, policy docs etc before you allow them to submit a price

Posted By David Bannister
Hi Drew. Can you use the Link Up scheme to evaluate suppliers? My limited understanding of it suggests that if you don't have it, you don't get the rail work.

Posted By Michelle L Dugard
Drew

If your commercial team are not involved at pre-tender then use as much weighting as you like - I would not ask for costs until they had met all the H&S pre-tender requirements and been suitably vetted anyway.

Posted By Drew
Hi again Michelle

Problem is that commercial are involved and they are saying to me "oh no you are asking for too much say!!" "we need to prioritise on cost control!!"

You see we are going to go straight to Invite To Tender stage without carrrying out a pre-qualification process! I see where you are coming from now but once we receive those tenders back they will include all aspects for evaluation including price!! And the purse string holders are playing hard ball!! :-)

Posted By John D Crosby
Hi Drew
Dupont had a saying that "safety was equal to cost, quality, production and morale" and they did rather well as a company - rated the world's most respected company. I have used this philosophy in both the private and the public sector without any problem and it always seemed to give us a good contractor.
Take care
John C

Posted By FJ
At the Pre-Tendering stage I use a total block
-if they fail significantly to meet certain standards.
The more they proceed through the process yes the "less" significance the "safety" side has in the scores- ending at c. 30% but as we have had such effect in the earlier stages I am less bothered- as has been said before "Value for money" tends to rule when the final decision is communicated to the powers that be, but I would suggest that a total veto at some stage is vital- otherwise you might be accused of allowing a company with relevant dubious safety standards to do your work

Posted By Rich T
I don't think it matters really - just make sure your "directing mind" has the final say, based on the information you all present to him/her.

Directors and senior managers have to make decisions based upon the likelihood of ALL of the identified business risks actually manifesting themselves. If they want to take a risk on the company that has a good price/delivery/etc. submission but a poor safety submission, then that is entirely their risk based judgement and their ultimate responsibility.

Posted By Mark Eden
Drew
I am presuming you have a CDM Coordinator appointed for your project(if , why not?).
As the client ask the CDMC to test / check the H&S competency & resource of the contractors, most prospective PC's are used to this and can readily produce the necessary information.