SSIP readiness check

One standard sits behind all of them

CHAS, SafeContractor, SMAS Worksafe, Constructionline and Achilles are not five different assessments. They are SSIP member schemes assessing against one published standard, the SSIP Core Criteria.

SSIP operates mutual recognition between members, which used to be called Deem to Satisfy. A current valid approval from any registered member is accepted by the others.

So a firm holding CHAS and being told to get SafeContractor as well is being asked for something the schemes themselves say is unnecessary. That request is usually a procurement habit rather than a requirement, and the answer is your entry on the SSIP portal.

There are sixteen criteria, not twelve

Almost every guide says twelve, and twelve is what applies to a straightforward contractor.

Criterion 13 covers designer duties and applies to designers and principal designers. Fourteen is principal designer duties. Fifteen is principal contractor duties. Sixteen is fleet operations and is advisory.

Which means a principal contractor preparing against a twelve-item list has prepared against the wrong list, and will meet criterion 15 for the first time during the assessment.

Three things you are asked about and do not have to have

Criterion 2 asks whether a drug and alcohol policy is in place, whether there are arrangements covering mental health, fatigue and wellbeing, and whether there is a behavioural safety programme.

All three are marked Response Advisory, with SSIP stating that holding them is not a mandatory requirement. Fleet scheme membership under criterion 16 is the same.

A question on a form reads as a demand, which is how firms end up paying a consultant to write policies the standard does not ask for. Answer honestly, including answering no.

Criterion 8 is the one that gets checked against a register

It is not "do you report accidents". It is a data return, and it is the one place where an optimistic answer is checkable in seconds.

Three years of RIDDOR figures broken into fatalities, specified injuries, over-seven-day injuries and reportable ill health. A summary of your last two incidents and what you changed. And five years of HSE prosecutions and enforcement with the corrective action.

SSIP says member schemes verify the response against the HSE Register of Convictions and Enforcement Notices, including any names the company was previously known by. Changing the trading name does not reset it. Declare it, and put the fix next to it.

Generic RAMS is the biggest single rejection

Criterion 10 asks for documented procedures, and then for real examples: site or project specific risk assessments and method statements from a project in the last twelve months, plus COSHH assessments for the substances you actually use.

An assessor recognises a downloaded template quickly, and the usual tell is that it describes activities the firm does not carry out. A roofing contractor submitting a method statement mentioning excavations has answered the question badly in a way that is hard to argue with.

The four-or-fewer concession almost nobody uses

Criterion 10 says that a supplier employing four or fewer personnel who does not have written arrangements should be able to describe how they identify hazards and complete risk assessments and safe systems of work.

That is a real concession for a very small firm, and it is not permission to turn up with nothing. The project-specific examples are still wanted. What you are excused is the layer of documentation describing how you produce them.

Designer duties follow the activity, not the job title

Under CDM 2015 a designer is anybody who prepares or modifies a design. That includes a fabricator working to their own connection details, and anybody specifying how something will be installed.

Plenty of firms are designers without anybody in the office thinking of themselves that way, and criterion 13 is assessed on top of the usual twelve when it applies.

What this can and cannot tell you

It produces a readiness picture from what you say you hold. Nobody here has seen your policy, your RAMS or your training records, and no software decides these: the assessor does.

What it is good for is finding the gap before you submit, because a resubmission costs the fee again and the time twice. Consultants charge somewhere between a few hundred and well over a thousand pounds per scheme, and a good deal of that is knowing which sixteen questions are coming.