Background
The Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) organisation is committed to both reducing the cost and bureaucracy involved in attaining stage one accreditation through its scheme providers. The list of organisations able to undertake and certify this stage one accreditation is growing but each follow a similar audit trail.

You may be a member of one or more schemes depending upon your customers requirements. You should remember that once you are a member of one certification body joining the next should be a simple registration and admin fee; for example

A client of ours is a member of CHAS (Contractors health and Safety Assessment scheme) but was required by a major client to be a member of SMAS. The latter was joined for £30.00 and the submission of a copy of the CHAS certificate.

We provide assistance to those who wish to join these registers. Please be aware that successful application requires the availablity of evidence to support the application - without such evidence you will be unable to join the register.

Those who hold retained advisory service contracts with us are usually ready for application at between 3 and 6 months depending on history and committment.

Statement from the Health & Safety Executive
“HSE 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 which has achieved accreditation can be confident that a reasonable and robust judgment has been made that the standard for competency in CDM 2007 has been met for the first stage of procurement”.