Pre Qualification Schemes
Pre Qualification Schemes
Over the years, the proliferation of health and safety pre-qualification questionnaires has placed increasing burdens on companies to repeatedly pre-qualify for both public and private sector work. For most companies Stage 1 pre-qualification has become a source of excessive paperwork and significant cost. This situation has become an unacceptable business overload to many Contractors and in turn, leads to a negative view of health and safety.
Steelwork contractor members of the BCSA undergo an assessment that reviews the company’s technical, financial and health & safety resources based on the competence and training in line with the PAS 91.
Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP)
BCSA supports the Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) Forum as it is supported by the Government and the Health and Safety Executive. The Forum’s schemes also all comply with the core criteria for health and safety. SSIP is committed to mutually recognise each of its member's schemes and BCSA will accept any SSIP certificate as Deemed to Satisfy (DTS) for the Health and Safety assessment section of the membership process.
Common Assessment Standard (CAS)
The Build UK Common Assessment Standard (CAS) is a Stage 1 prequalification scheme that contains industry agreed questions and is divided into 10 key question sets. Companies can be certified against the standard from one of the approved Assessment Organisations and this should be accepted by Contractors and Clients who should no longer need to specify a particular assessment body. The Common Assessment Standard, which is endorsed by the CLC, is an industry-agreed question set with two levels of certification - desktop and site-based - and companies can apply to any of the recognised Assessment Bodies to get the appropriate level dependent upon their trade, size and requirements of their clients.
Visit the Build UK website to find out more
BCSA Sample Section 4 of the Common Assessment Standard
The BCSA has prepared some guidance and templates on how to answer Section 4 : Health and Safety, which can be downloaded in the link below.
BCSA Core criteria for demonstration of company competency: Contractors PAS 91 2013
Build UK CAS Launch Webinar
In April 2021 Build UK provided a webinar for BCSA members focussed on the launch of CAS. A recording of the webinar including the full Q&A can be viewed here.