Hi All,

Sorry if this question has gone through recently but i have not been online for while, I was recently sent to a link which took me to the SSIP and in it the HSE are throwing their weight behind it. I always thought they stood back from this kind of thing. I have to do all my own companies pre-quals and to be honest it doesnt matter what safety body they say they are in CHAS etc it doesnt mean they work safely the proof is in the eating as it were. With an in depth pre-qual and follow up audits of the said contractor. On one hand for the HSE to say they are behind somehting like this is groundbreaking.

Could i ask what other people think about this? and maybe someone can explain what the SSIP are as opposed to Safecontractor and CHAS etc ?

Thanks in advance

Alan

Alan

I attend the launch of SSIP last year. It is a good idea and goal - to bring all or as many as possible, third party acceditation schemes under the SSIP banner and to mutually recognised. CHAS, although not everyones cup of tea, should be applauded because they have tried to take the lead. However the difficulty is that most of them are commercial organisations and this has led to organisations such as Achilles and Safe Contractor withdrawing from the SSIP process.

So at the moment there are still a plethora of third party accreditation schemes whcih are not "unified' and clients, consultants, and contractors are still having to spend money and time applying for different schems depending on where they want to win work. Eg; at my last company we acted as CDMC and health and safety consultants - for some clients we needed CHAS, we were already APS registered practice as i wanted us to stand out to clients, then to work for the utility companies we had to become achilles verified as well - thousands of pounds, many many man hours - all because no one in the HSE or government will realise they need to show some leadership on this.

It must be remembered though that these schemes only really carry out a stage 1 competency check, the important bit is the next stage where you actually find out and assess the indivudals and their experience who you are getting to work for you.

I fear this will continue for quite a while.

Regards, Mal

Thanks very much thus far guys for your measured and informative replies and i understand and agree with all points.

Whilst pre-qualing over the years i have found many with a plethora of accreditations and still not been very good and vice versa those with nothing and being good. It seems the greatest problem is middle managment in medium to big companies who say things like a contractor has to be in this or that without really realising what they mean. You can never beat a thorough pre-qual and we have even gone to the head office of high hazard ones to see the systems properly.

I understand what the SSIP is trying to do but was just a little suprised the HSE threw its backing behind it so vocally.

Another problem i have is there are lots of people who frown upon us and say things like all these companies just have a licence to print money which to some degree i agree with and makes it harder for the rest of us.