About the SSIP Forum


SSIP was founded in May 2009 following the Government report on Accelerating the SME economic engine: through transparent, simple and strategic procurement. Supported by the HSE SSIP aims to streamline prequalification and encourage straightforward mutual recognition between its Member Schemes.

All assessments completed by our Member Schemes are completed utilising the SSIP Core Criteria which is aligned to the Government-backed construction pre-qualification document PAS 91, ensuring consistency within supply chain management.

History

The revised Construction (Design & Management) Regulations, which came into force in April 2007, introduced the Stage 1 Core Criteria for assessing health and safety competence of contractors and consultants working in the construction industry. The introduction of these competence criteria provided an opportunity for existing health and safety prequalification schemes to build on and formalise mutual recognition already in operation amongst some schemes.

In April 2007, an initial meeting was held at the Health & Safety Executive's Headquarters, which included representatives from the Contractors' Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS), Constructionline, Exor and the National House-Building Council (NHBC) to discuss the potential for the SSIP Forum.

Following further regular meetings over the next two years, SSIP Forum founder members agreed and signed up to an ethos that it should act as an umbrella organisation to facilitate mutual recognition between health and safety assessment schemes wherever it is practicable to do so.

SSIP assessments are all judged on the core criteria (threshold standard) approved by HSE. The core criteria describe what it means for a business to comply with basic health and safety legislation. The core criteria were initially published by HSE in Appendix 4 of the CDM 2007 Approved Code of Practice and following the revision to the CDM Regulations in 2015 the SSIP Forum agreed to adopt the Core Criteria to become part of the SSIP Terms of Reference.

Importantly, the SSIP Forum work to actively advise and influence clients (buyers) on acceptable interpretation and appropriateness of health and safety competence/capability standards in the UK. Both public and private sector clients (buyers) who run their own approved or preferred list of contractors require contractors and consultants wishing to be placed on those lists to have their health and safety competence assessed at the prequalification stage. This places a time-consuming and costly burden on all parties involved which is further exacerbated by the number of times a business is required to go through repeated pre-qualification.

Founder Members


A special status for those members that provided the initial start-up support and funding for SSIP.