CHAS (Contractors Health and Safety Scheme) is the UK's largest and most well-known accreditation scheme for contractors. The main purpose of the scheme is to help streamline the process of bidding for contracts by avoiding duplication.
During the tendering process, clients will need to be assured that contractors bidding for the work are health and safety compliant and have all of the necessary systems and procedures in place.
This used to mean that contractors had to supply all of this information each and every time they tendered a bid on a contract as part of the pre-qualification process, which resulted in lots of duplication and wasted time.
Since the introduction of the CHAS scheme, contractors who have successfully achieved accreditation will be deemed to satisfy the requirements of pre-qualification and will not need to submit the information again.
If you are a contractor who is interested in bidding on lucrative contract opportunities, getting accredited on the CHAS scheme is a must as an ever-growing number of clients, such as health trusts, councils, emergency services, the voluntary sector, housing associations, government departments and private companies will not even consider awarding contracts to companies who are not accredited.
What Does Accreditation Involve?
The process of becoming a CHAS accredited contractor involves undergoing a rigorous assessment of your health and safety arrangements by a CHAS assessor. They will look at the following areas:
- Prosecutions or Enforcement Notices
- Health and Safety Policy and Organisation for Health and Safety
- Arrangements for Health and Safety
- Access to Competent Corporate (General) Health and Safety Advice
- Training and Information
- Individual Qualifications & Experience
- Monitoring, Audit and Review
- Workforce Involvement
- Accident Reporting and Accident Investigation
- Sub-Contracting / Sub-Consulting
- Risk Assessment Leading to a Safe Method of Work
The above list is not exhaustive. Furthermore, the assessor will be looking for evidence that these health and safety arrangements are properly embedded into the business. They will not accept the practice of merely gathering together lots of paperwork in an attempt to give the appearance of compliance.
How Can Stockwell Safety Help?
We can help with the completion of the application process by looking at your current health and safety arrangements and identifying any potential problem areas. Once these problem areas have been identified, we can help you to address them.
What this would involve would be dependant on what the specific problems are. Some could be quick fixes that and addressed without significant delay. Others might involve a bit more time and effort, especially if you currently have nothing in place because, as mentioned earlier, it might not be as simple as writing a procedure or method statement; the whole idea of the CHAS scheme is to get good health and safety arrangements properly embedded within the business, not just collecting together lots of paperwork.
Our assistance will help to significantly shorten the CHAS accreditation process, whilst also preventing you from being pulled too far out of the usual day-to-day running of your business trying to negotiate what can be a complicated process.