There are many third party accreditation schemes that are used by a wide range of organisations. There is no legal requirement for the third party accreditation of health and safety performance of a company as part of the procurement process. Many suppliers and their (potential) clients choose to use the services of a third party accreditation scheme for health and safety, with the purpose of helping them to manage their tendering or procurement needs. Generally, such schemes are used as some form of pre-selection criteria, particularly in the construction industry and in the facilities management sector, although such schemes are potentially useful across a wide range of industries. Some organisations, for example, insist that all of their contractors have registered with, and have been accredited by, a third-party organisation such as: Buying Force, Construction Line, EXOR, Achilles, SafeContractor or CHAS (although there are many more third part accreditation schemes around). Obtaining third party accreditation is not a given – it often requires several submissions to address all of the issues satisfactorily (some third party accreditation organisations have suggested that in the order of 80% of contractors fail to get through the accreditation process on the first attempt).
Why put yourself through a third party accreditation scheme?
Many organisations that put themselves through the rigours of a third party accreditation scheme do so in order to meet a requirement of at least one of their current (or prospective) clients. Being accredited will not necessarily lead to more work, but for companies, failure to achieve accreditation may result in work being lost.
How do third-party accreditation schemes work?
The principle behind all of these third-party accreditation schemes is fairly simple and straightforward. A provider of services (a contractor), must first register their company details with the accreditation company. As well as doing this, they must also provide information relating to their health and safety policy and associated supporting documentation. This associated supporting documentation may include:
- copies of up-to-date insurance documents,
- a signed copy of the health and safety policy statement,
- training records for employees, including evidence of induction training,
- arrangements for the vetting or accreditation of any subcontractors and may be used,
- copies of appropriate risk assessment documentation relating to operations or undertakings consistent with the services to be provided,
- copies of method statements relating to the operations or undertakings consistent with services to be provided,
- information relating to sources of competent health and safety advice and guidance,
- evidence that a statutory examinations are carried out (such as LOLER certificates),
- evidence of active monitoring of the health and safety performance of the company (such as safety walk round or site audit documents),
- evidence of on-going health and safety training, including asbestos awareness training,
- etc.
Be prepared to provide information relating to areas other than health and safety. Some schemes require information relating to financial aspects of the company (turnover, etc) and the environmental management of the company, or even information on equal opportunities policies, etc.
Advantages of third-party accreditation schemes
These third-party accreditation schemes have the potential to take some of the worry away from the client in appointing a contractor as they can select them from a database of approved contractors. Successfully completing the accreditation puts your organisation on the database and may open up new areas for trade. Another theoretical advantage of the third-party accreditation scheme is that subscription to such a scheme should mean that the subscribing organisation only has to go through this process once. However, this theoretical advantage does not always translate into reality as organisations often find themselves subscribing to many third-party accreditation schemes to meet the demands of various client organisations. The relatively new Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) Competence Forum was set up in response to concerns from the construction industry with regard to the plethora of pre-qualification assessments and forms they had to fill out, many of which duplicated previous efforts and added significantly to costs and paperwork. One potential advantage of the use of the third-party accreditation scheme is that it provides documentary evidence that the client organisation has undertaken at least some rudimentary evaluation of health and safety performance of prospective contractors. A significant advantage to organisations that have successfully been accredited by one of these schemes is that it is slightly more secure from competition from organisations that have not been accredited.
Disadvantages of third-party accreditation schemes
As mentioned above there are many third party accreditation schemes currently in operation in United Kingdom and different schemes are favoured by different clients. In many cases, there is little opportunity for accreditation by one scheme to lead on to accreditation under another scheme. This means that some contracting organisations need to undertake several third-party accreditations, which is both costly and time-consuming.
Another disadvantage of third-party accreditation schemes is that they are principally paper or desktop exercises, has few of these schemes involve any site visitor or direct communication with the client or the contracting organisation.
Third party accreditation schemes are based around written records and documentation. This creates a natural barrier for the very small organisations that do not necessarily require a written health and safety policy (if they have fewer than five employees). If such organisations wish to partake of a third-party accreditation scheme, then they will have to reduce all of their policies and procedures to writing. Naturally, there are costs in both time and money in pursuing this.
How to complete (the health and safety part of) a third-party accreditation scheme
In order to be effective in gaining third party accreditation, it is important for the company to have a good grasp of health and safety within the company – based on management commitment to health and safety as part of the business as well as good written procedures. Any organisation that has a suitable and up-to-date health and safety policy that reflects it undertakings and which has completed suitable and sufficient assessments of the risks arising from it undertakings should be able to satisfactorily complete a third-party accreditation scheme. In order to be successful, it is recommended that the company does not leave the process to the last minute, as there may be a need to write new policies and procedures and to collect and collate records, etc. The following list covers most of the key points that will need to be covered when sending in the application:
- signed copy of the health and safety policy statement (most third-party accreditation schemes require evidence that this has been signed and dated recently)
- Sample policies from within the health and safety policy document covering key issues, such as:
- accident and incident investigation
- asbestos safety policy (including the discovery of asbestos on site)
- control of the contract is policy (including details on the selection appointment and monitoring of all subcontractors)
- electrical safety policy (including a policy for testing maintenance and inspection portable electrical equipment)
- fire safety policy
- first aid policy (including training records and certificates for first aiders)
- hazard spotting and corrective actions
- loan working policy
- machinery and equipment safety policy (including maintenance servicing and statutory examination of equipment)
- manual handling policy
- occupational health policy (including, where appropriate, arrangements for occupational health monitoring)
- training policy
- work at height policy
- examples of relevant to the risk assessments (the should relate to the services provided and activities undertaken on behalf of clients) and should cover at least the following areas:
- fire safety (in many cases, a fire safety risk assessment based on office-based activities is satisfactory)
- manual handling
- mechanical handling (including the use of cranes, forklift trucks etc)
- noise and vibration
- use of tools (including hand tools and power tools)
- work at height (including arrangements for rescue of suspended casualties)
- other risk assessments, that may be required relating to the nature of the work to be undertaken
- examples of relevant method statements (this should relate to the services provided and activities undertaken on behalf of clients)
- evidence of training, including training records and, ideally, copies of CSCS Cards and other similar schemes (including information on how training needs are identified and managed). It is not necessary for all training to be externally accredited (such as by IOSH or the CIEH) and so most of the records will be of internally provided training (such as on the job training and tool-box talks).
- information on the source of competent health and safety advice used by the organisation and details as to whether the source of this advice is from within the company or from an external provider of such services (such as health and safety consultant) - such information will usually include the CV of the source of such competent advice
- accident statistics (with break down into categories) for the last three years
- examples of accident investigation, including identified a remedial actions, for at least two accidents or near misses that have occurred in the last one or two years
- details of any prosecutions or enforcement actions resulting in the issuing of either prohibition notices or improvement notices
- consideration of the needs for occupational health checks and monitoring
- evidence of the testing and maintenance of items of portable electrical equipment
- For some applications (such as CHAS) you need to provide a D-U-N-S number, which is a registration number issued by Dun & Bradstreet. This can be obtained, free of charge, by applying on line at http://dbuk.dnb.com/Forms/Customer_Service.asp
One of the most common ways that organisations fail to overcome the various hurdles associated with third party accreditation schemes is that the information, although provided, is not clear and transparent. When completing application form for a third party accreditation scheme, do give consideration as to easy it is for the third party accreditor to read and to understand. If issues lack clarity, then they are likely to be returned to you for clarification, resulting in further work and costs (in time and effort). Attention to detail on the initial application can save time later on.
Summary
Gaining third party accreditation can be rewarding as it can help to secure work, but the process must not be undertaken lightly. Many of these schemes are largely paperwork exercises and successful completion will depend on the quality and completeness of your documentation. Although few of these accreditation schemes currently recognise each other, the discipline of completing one accreditation will make others easier and will make the process of tender submission easier as the necessary documentation is likely to be available to the company.
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