A new forum is aiming to reduce bureaucracy and boost client confidence in construction contractor competency. The "Safety Schemes in Procurement - Competence Forum" (SSIP) is using the Construction, Design & Management (CDM ) Regulations 2007 as the catalyst for achieving mutual recognition of health and safety pre-qualification standards and cutting compliance costs for smaller businesses.

The CDM 2007 Approved Code of Practice sets out the minimum level of pre-qualification of contractors prior to procurement. SSIP forum members - which include the Contractors Health & Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS), Exor Management Services, the National House Building Council Safety Scheme and the SAFEcontractor scheme - provide a range of health and safety pre-qualification services to both public and private sector organisations. Other bodies represented on the forum are Constructionline, the Construction Clients Group, the Construction Confederation and the Specialist Engineering Contractors' Group.

SSIP Chair John Murphy of CHAS told HSP that the forum was born out of HSE-commissioned research on CDM, which concluded that the large number of pre-qualification scheme providers were not really talking to each other and there was room for improvement in mutual recognition of standards. "As a manager of a pre-qualification scheme, I often get complaints that mutuality is not as good as it should be," he said. Yet, the evidence shows that mutual recognition avoids bureaucracy and duplication. In the last 12 months alone, existing and new mutual recognition arrangements have saved an estimated £1/2 million.

The HSE is fully behind SSIP. "The main driver for this work is to reduce bureaucracy and paperwork for contractors at the pre-qualification stage, and to provide confidence to small clients and businesses procuring construction work," said Stephen Williams, the HSE's chief inspector of construction. "Mutual recognition... will mean that clients procuring construction work can have assurance that those they are appointing meet the standard of competence required, at the first stage of procurement."

The forum's next steps will be to establish a limited company, and to agree the terms and conditions for membership, an important part of which will be independent third party annual audits of all the schemes involved. This will give clients confidence that any contractor assessed by a SSIP member will meet the core criteria of CDM.