What is SSIP and how can it help my business?
If you’ve tendered for work in recent years, you’ve probably seen the term Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) banded about on company brochures and questionnaires and you may be thinking what is it and what can it do for me and my business?
Well, SSIP stands for Safety Schemes in Procurement and despite what you may think, its not actually another assessment or questionnaire for you to wade through! With the ever growing number of Health and Safety Assessment and Accreditation schemes etc that we are all being presented with when tendering and pre-qualifying for work, you may in fact already have SSIP without even realising!
SSIP was set up to provide an umbrella body for assessment schemes to try and establish common standards between them, and those schemes that become members of SSIP all share a degree of mutual recognition of each others schemes. In fact, it is because of the ever growing number and variety of health and safety assessment schemes that exist, that SSIP was set up. In fact it was in effect a threat from the industry and the regulators to the assessment schemes telling them to work together or risk being outlawed. So hence the SSIP was created out of necessity to try and simply and unify each of the competing health and safety assessment schemes.
So have your ever been in a situation where one client asks for CHAS accreditation, and another asks for Safe Contractor? How frustrating was that? Before SSIP you would have to go through the full assessment process, along with all the cost, time and hassle associated with completing each of the different schemes questionnaires, and we’re sure you know, that’s not a 5 minute job!
The main principle of SSIP is that if you have a health and safety accreditation from an SSIP member such as CHAS, SMAS, Acclaim, Altius, SafeContractor, etc…… then you have satisfied the core criteria for all other SSIP members schemes. So in practice, clients should be asking you to provide evidence for a health and safety assessment completed by an SSIP member. Then you can just provide then with a copy of your accreditation certificate for whichever scheme you have chosen to be assessed by. Easy right!
In fact, SSIP now lists over thirty members, so if you have any type of health and safety accreditation, it is worth checking if it is part of the SSIP standard and you can do that by clicking here. Also take a look at the following page on our website ‘Contractor Safety Assessment Schemes‘ for more information on how to get these accreditation’s for your business and how we can help to simplify the process even further for you.
With SSIP now in existence, your clients are now more likely to be satisfied with any of the SSIP certificate, as they all meet the same common standards. In fact, having SSIP is better for everyone! More choice of which scheme to apply for and less chance of being excluded for having the wrong certificate!
However, that’s the theory but we still hear of clients who insist their suppliers being registered with a specific SSIP Scheme such as SafeContractpr or Altius for example. In these cases if you have a valid certificate from another SSIP Scheme, then most SSIP members will no longer require you to go through the whole assessment again. You can simply apply with your SSIP certificate (for example, provide Acclaim with a valid CHAS certificate) at a reduced cost and reduced documentation requirements.
At Your Safety Advisor Ltd we work with you to help you gain your SSIP accreditation. So regardless of whether you are applying for the first time and have nothing in place or are about to complete your annual renewal, then we can help. Call us today on 0117 442 0185 or visit our website.
