26 November, 2009 | By Rhiannon Hoyle
Further progress is being made in the standardisation of pre-qualification systems after the Builder’s Profile this week announced a new link up with the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme.
The move, announced at the National Specialist Contractors Council’s annual lunch, will allow contractors and clients registered with the Builder’s Profile to verify the health and safety details of their suppliers registered with CHAS.
The Builder’s Profile said it hoped the new relationship would “help to rationalise the multitude of systems in the construction industry”.
It added: “By accepting a company’s pre-qualification information via the Builder’s Profile, buyers can now go straight to the records of their suppliers on the CHAS database at the touch of a button.
“The Builder’s Profile has also been extended to include all the CHAS questions and CHAS will now accept the Builder’s Profile as an application for assessment.”
The announcement follows the six-month anniversary of Safety Schemes in Procurement, an umbrella organisation set up to facilitate mutual recognition between health and safety PQQs, of which CHAS is a member.
The progress in improving the industry’s pre-qualifications systems has been backed by the Health and Safety Executive, which hopes that cutting “the bureaucracy” of PQQs will allow firms time to give greater focus to health and safety issues on individual projects.
NSCC chief executive Suzannah Nichol welcomed the link up between CHAS and the Builder’s Profile.
She said: “Some specialist contractors are completing more than 100 bespoke pre-qualification questionnaires every year, all requesting essentially the same information.
“Mutual recognition between existing pre-qualification schemes is the key objective of the SSIP Forum and we are delighted to support that.”
Contractors across the industry are being urged to get involved in the SSIP Forum, with smaller firms in particular being told the initiative could open the door for them to tender for a much wider range of work.
HSE chief construction inspector Philip White last month said the SSIP initiative was “an opportunity we must not lose”.
The scheme was launched online in May and is an agreement between assessment schemes, trade federations representing both clients and suppliers, and the HSE, to simplify the prequalification stage of procurement, reduce duplication and improve standards of health and safety in the industry.
