Becoming an ‘Approved’ Contractor

Why buyer organisations increasingly seek to work with ‘approved’ contractors – and what it means for your business.

Small businesses are increasingly asked to complete prequalification questionnaires when tendering for work with buyer organisations, creating a huge paperwork burden. The HSE supports Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) to simplify prequalification for contractors through an assessment of health and safety law compliance against a core criteria, approved by the HSE, that all SSIP assessments are judged on.

An overview of Safety Schemes

Health and safety accreditation enables contractors to demonstrate their compliance with health and safety legislation. You may find buyer organisations are increasingly mandating health and safety accreditations in a bid to manage their risk of reputational damage, financial loss, and in the worst-case scenario, regulatory enforcement following an accident on-site.

Hundreds of big-brand UK organisations recognise SafeContractor as their chosen health and safety partner and will only work with accredited contractors. As a founding member of the SSIP Forum, Alcumus SafeContractor is committed to reducing the bureaucracy and duplication of effort often associated with prequalification. Together with the other members of SSIP, we help both clients and contractors save millions of pounds each year.

How the Industry verifies your compliance

All SSIP members work up to 14-point core criteria and most will then ask you to submit insurance documents in addition. SafeContractor is one of the only health and safety accreditation schemes that goes beyond the core criteria to also ask contractors dynamic risk-based questions tailored to their business profile and types of work. This helps you to articulate how you carry out the required work activity, which doesn’t just demonstrate your compliance to help mitigate risks; it makes you more appealing to work with. This allows potential buyer organisations to make better informed procurement decisions when considering who to invite on site, and this is one of the reasons that SafeContractor is the required standard for so many health and safety conscious organisations.

How SafeContractor goes above and beyond

At SafeContractor, we help more than 31,000 contractors to grow their businesses and win new customers – it’s in our DNA. We boast the largest in-house technical team amongst any SSIP member, so we can guide and support you through the accreditation process with a personable feedback loop, bespoke to your unique requirements. Achieving SafeContractor accreditation is a great way to enhance your business reputation and to stand out from the crowd by joining one of the UK’s leading health and safety schemes.

Already accredited with an alternative SSIP member?

The SSIP ‘Deem to Satisfy’ chart enables contractors who already have a valid accreditation in place with one of the schemes already but need to acquire certification under another SSIP scheme. The Deem to Satisfy agreement allows contractors who are already approved by specific SSIP schemes to use this approval in a Deem to Satisfy process, thus reducing repetition and duplication of work. This also helps ensure that all SSIP schemes work to the same standards in the health and safety element of SSIP’s core criteria. Members of existing SSIP schemes are eligible for a 20% discount when using Deem to Satisfy from an alternative scheme to become a SafeContractor member. Joining SafeContractor opens your business up to hundreds of big brand clients who only work with SafeContractor approved members.