Does SSIP work?
You may be asking yourself what is SSIP? SSIP stands for "Safety Schemes in Procurement". This scheme has been active for a number of years and members include CHAS, Safecontractor & Constructionline. The Initial idea behind this scheme was to actively reduce health and safety assessment costs and bureaucracy in the supply chain.
The major problem however lies with your clients. Speaking from experience with one of our clients who works in the building trade. They are an SME company with an annual turnover of approximately ￡250,000 and they are currently CHAS registered and pay their annual subscription fees. From memory, they have been active members for approximately 5 years. We were recently approached by the director to assist with an application for another SSIP membership as they were dealing with a potential new client. I made our client aware that his organisation was a SSIP member and should in reality only need to forward his CHAS certificate to deem to satisfy any health and Safety requirements on his pre-qualification questionnaire. As our client was not aware that about this possibly route, they explored further. It was however proved fruitless as the client confirmed the client would only approve suppliers who was registered with a certain SSIP member. Unfortunately for our client they funded another 3rd party accreditation assessment and we successfully assisted and certification followed thereafter. My main point with this post is our client had to fund a further ￡500 to tick the right boxes. It gives me no satisfaction of the extra work it generates for our company when you realise they already have systems in place that have initially been assessed.
Unfortunately, until everyone catches up on SSIP, I’m afraid suppliers will be expected to register with their preferred safety schemes until attitudes and awareness change. All is what we can do in the meantime is offer an arm around the shoulder and offer our support as we share your frustrations!
Paul Barlow
Principal H&S Consultant