What does your pre-qualification process do about pre-construction?

When appointing a contractor to a project, reasonable steps must be taken to ensure that the contractor has the necessary skills, knowledge and competence to complete the work and in a manner that satisfies current health & safety requirements. Pre-Construction is an important part of any project, yet this importance is overlooked by a lot of supplier databases.

Pre-qualification, pre-construction and project management are all included as standard with Samson.

Main contractors/buyers have several construction based supplier databases available to choose from, all geared towards helping them source pre-qualified contractors but once a supplier/contractor has successfully been appointed on a project how do you ensure they have the necessary health and safety procedures in place?

Although pre-qualification provides you with most of the information you need to know about your supplier there are often details specific to a project and type of work they will be doing on that project that you need to know.

Pre-construction information is a requirement of the 'Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015' and both you and your client need to ensure that all reasonable efforts have been made to reduce risk and that Health & Safety on site meets the required regulations.

Information such as:

• Who will be the contractors Site Safety Advisors specific for the project.
• Can the contractor outline Method of Work Statement highlighting general safety controls for potentially hazardous tasks specific to the works.
• Have site operatives received advice on things such as working at heights, asbestos awareness, scaffold appreciation etc.
• How often will the contractor hold your Project Safety meetings, who will attend and who will be issuing the meeting minutes.

This is all information that the pre-qualification process will probably not cover, but it is important to show that all reasonable steps have been taken to ensure health & safety regulations are adhered to.

With Samson.

Samson covers both Pre-Qualification and Pre-Construction allowing you to manage all your supplier/project health and safety competency from one place.

You simply enter your project details, add your suppliers from a list containing only pre-qualified suppliers and issue them with your standard Pre-Construction questionnaire.

This questionnaire is entirely bespoke based on your company's needs. If you don't have one already in place, but have been thinking about introducing one we can provide you with a list of common questions to choose from.

As our business has grown Liaison has become ever more useful in properly vetting and approving our supply chain in an efficient and cost effective manner; Liaison takes the drudgery out of information gathering in an efficient and user friendly fashion, it has been a great help and time saver to our organisation.