HVCA members are being encouraged to take advantage of the Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) Forum, which has been established - with the endorsement of the government and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) - by four of the UK's leading operators of approved contractor schemes.
In a letter to members, HVCA deputy chief executive Roderick Pettigrew highlighted the fact that the key element common to the SSIP Forum members - Constructionline, the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS), Exor Management Services and the National House Building Council - is that their schemes comply with the core criteria for health and safety competence contained in the Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) to the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007.

As a result, they have agreed to mutual recognition of each other's schemes - so that, when firms that have pre-qualified under one scheme are invited to pre-qualify under another scheme, they can be 'deemed to satisfy' the health and safety requirements of the
second scheme.

'In such circumstances, contractors can write to the second (or subsequent) scheme operator, providing details of the scheme under which they have already qualified,' Pettigrew explained.

In a statement, the HSE has confirmed that it 'recognises that an accreditation assessment carried out by any of the member schemes satisfies the requirements of the core criteria'.

'Any client wishing to procure the services of a business that has achieved accreditation can be confident that a reasonable and robust judgment has been made that the standard for competence in CDM 2007 has been met for the first stage of procurement,' the statement continues.

In cases where contractors are required to pre-qualify via schemes operated by organisations which are not in membership of the SSIP Forum, they may wish to request confirmation that the scheme in question (a) has government/HSE approval, and (b) is compliant with the first stage of the ACoP core criteria, which is now part of the CDM Regulations' legal framework.