SafeContractor Approved
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The SafeContractor Approved Health and Safety Assessment scheme is one of the largest and most well known of the SSIP Health and Safety Accreditation Schemes. Your Safety Advisor Ltd can assist you to gain your Safecontractor Approved SSIP Accreditation, by guiding you through the SafeContractor application process and assessment stages.
Furthermore, once you are approved by SafeContractor, you can use your SafeContractor Approved Membership to easily gain other SSIP Accreditation’s such as CHAS and SMAS for example.
SafeContractor Approved is a very well recognised scheme and Your Safety Advisor Ltd can work with you to help ensure that you not only have all the necessary health and safety paperwork and documentation in place, but that you also have the required health and safety training, safety procedures and policies in place. In addition to this, you will also have to demonstrate to SafeContractor that you have access to competent health and safety advice and support available to your company. Your Safety Advisor Ltd can again help you to fulfill this requirement if you appoint Your Safety Advisor Ltd as your retained Health and Safety Advisors.
Due to the nature of this work, the costs shown above for the completion of your SafeContractor assessment will be quoted on a client by client basis, based on what you already have in place, some clients will clearly have more health and safety documentation and/or safety training in place than other clients….. Should any of the documentation that SafeContractor needs to see be missing, Your Safety Advisor Ltd can help to ensure that it is put into place as part of your SafeContractor assessment.
Please call or email us for a quotation.
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SafeContractor Approved – SSIP Accreditation
SafeContractor Approved is a third party Health and Safety Accreditation scheme and founding member of the Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP), which demonstrates to potential clients that you meet specific standards of health and safety.
Being SafeContractor Approved, or for that matter having any valid SSIP Accreditation helps to demonstrate that you take health and safety seriously and are a safety conscious company. SafeContractor has been designed to review and audit health and safety policies, procedures, arrangements, training and other health and safety documentation.
The overriding aim of the system is to be able to provide assurances to others that your company meets and/or exceeds the minimum prescribed health and safety standards laid out by SafeContractor and the overriding SSIP. Furthermore by being SSIP Accredited it helps to reduce the need to requirement to complete and submit multiple PQQ’s/health and safety assessments.
SafeContractor is used by a wide range of client bodies both public and private, including major contractors and retail clients; to Local authorities and the NHS. Being SafeContractor Accredited also means you’ll be added to the SafeContractor Approved list/database of approved contractors and many clients also use this database to help them find suitable contractors who have already had their health and safety arrangements assessed.
As an Accredited Contractor, you’ll also be provided with a media pack and logos that can be used on your works vehicles and website to help promote the fact that you are a SafeContractor Approved or Accredited contractor which is committed to high standards of health and safety.
What Will be Assessed in order to gain SafeContractor Approved Status?
You’ll be allocated a SafeContractor Auditor to whom you’ll need to forward your completed application form and supporting information. The type of documentation that needs to be submitted varies according to the type of work you do and the size of your company. The following list does however provide an indication of the type of documentation required:
- Health and Safety Policy and Procedures Manual
- Signed Health & Safety Policy Statement
- Health and Safety Organisation
- Health and Safety Responsibilities
- Health and Safety Arrangements/Procedures
- Work equipment procedures
- Health & safety training provision including copies of training certificates
- Welfare Arrangements
- First Aid Arrangements
- Examples Risk Assessments and Method Statements (RAMS)
- Example COSHH Assessments
- Accident Reporting Procedures
- Sub-Contractor Assessments
- CDM Arrangements
- CDM Safety Plan if you fulfill the role of the Principal Contractor
- Fire Risk Assessment for your premises
- Noise and Vibration Assessments
- Electrical Safety Arrangements
- Manual Handling Assessments
- Insurance details
- PAT Testing Records
- PUWER Inspection Records
- Health and Safety Inspection Reports and Audits
This isn’t everything you’ll need and similarly not everything above will necessarily apply to you and your business.
What are the Benefits of Being SafeContractor Approved?
Being SafeContractor Approved, means you can immediately display to both existing and potential clients that you have been independently assessed and checked against the common SSIP Standards and can therefore demonstrate your compliance with these standards. This means that your clients can be assured that they are using a competent and safety conscious contractor and so are even discharging some of their own health and safety duties and responsibilities by using a SafeContractor Approved organisation.
So ultimately its a great marketing tool, but at the same time, it does make you stand back and think about your Health and Safety Arrangements, it may also force you to update certain aspects or provide additional training to your staff, which isn’t a bad thing as its easy to put these things off for a rainy day which never arrives.
The benefits of being SafeContractor Approved /SSIP Accredited for contractors and tradesmen include:
- A nationally recognised Safety Accreditation (SafeContractor Approved)
- SSIP Membership/Accreditation
- Access to tender lists
- Increased company status
- Potential to grow your business
- The establishment of Safety Systems for your company
- Simplification of future Pre-Qualification Questionnaires (PQQ’s)
- Demonstration of compliance with Health and Safety Requirements
However, for many businesses, particularly smaller companies and sole traders, the prospect of completing a SafeContractor accreditation application can be a daunting, confusing and time-consuming prospect. And where larger companies have the advantage of a team of in-house Safety Advisors to do this sort of work for them, this is not an economically viable solution for smaller companies and therefore our retained Health and Safety Advisor Service helps to level the playing field, by enabling small companies and sole traders to have access to competent health and safety advice for a low monthly or annual fee.
Additionally as a Retained Health and Safety Advisor Service customer, our Safety Consultants can help to complete your SafeContractor Approved SSIP Accreditation at a low fixed cost, enabling you to become SafeContractor Approved/Accredited quickly and simply.
We offer a fixed cost and our SafeContractor Approved/Accreditation service includes:
- Full unlimited support throughout the assessment process until your application has been approved
- Provision of our Retained Health and Safety Advisor Service for 12 months
- A brand new comprehensive Health and Safety Policy and Procedures Manual for your company
- Completion of the online SafeContractor Approved Health & Safety Questionnaire
- Uploading of your supporting information and evidence to the SafeContractor Approved Portal
- We will help you to create all the documents and supporting evidence required, which will typically include:
- Risk Assessments
- Method Statements
- CoSHH Assessments
- Sub-Contractor Competence Assessments
- Toolbox Talk
- Health and Safety Training etc.
Unlike some other organisations providing a similar service, all SafeContractor Approved applications are completed by Your Safety Advisor Ltd using our own Chartered Health and Safety experts with ongoing safety support throughout the process. We do not use administrators/clerical staff or lowly qualified safety staff to carry out this work.
Is the Assessment Process Complicated or Difficult?
Like most things, the more effort you put in the better the result, but unfortunately, unless you also have the technical/professional knowledge of the Health and Safety requirements that SafeContractor are expecting you to know about, then some people feel like they are fighting a loosing battle!
Not everyone will successfully complete the assessment first time, in fact if your documents are not satisfactory, or you do not have the necessary training or other evidence in place, then it is very likely that your SafeContractor assessor will reject your application and fail you.
A lot of the calls we receive are from people whose have failed the initial SafeContractor Assessment. So if you’re struggling with your application, or have already had it rejected, then get in touch with Your Safety Advisor Ltd and we can help you to become SafeContractor Approved.