Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) is an umbrella organisation in which members provide health and safety assessment schemes to contractors working in the supply chain to demonstrate compliance with safety practices to potential clients.
SSIP Accreditations are recognised across the UK and were designed to save contractors time when tendering for work with clients. Rather than completing several health & safety assessments for different clients, SSIP streamlined the tendering process by enabling all contractors and buyers to follow a closely related framework and reduce costs for contractors by removing the need for multiple application costs.
To gain your certificate your business must be able to show that you meet the core criteria. All SSIP member schemes will require this information from you and below you can see a breakdown of what areas you will need to meet.
SMAS Worksafe is one of the registered members of SSIP. This means we are able to accredit businesses with an SSIP certificate should they meet the required standards. Because our assessors work in alignment with the SSIP Core Criteria, being certified by SMAS will give you cross-recognition between SSIP member schemes. This means that any potential clients will more easily be able to identify your level of compliance as your question set will closely follow a universal structure, meaning they can identify your competence more clearly.
As one of the leading SSIP schemes in the UK with over 25,000 contractors signed up, we provide all of our members with ongoing support on their health and safety compliance and their policies through our SMAS Worksafe SSIP package.
Our assessors will provide you with a SMAS Worksafe question set that includes ten questions about your risk assessments, method statements, and your business’s health and safety policy. Once you’ve answered those questions and provided any relevant documents, we’ll assess your answers to see if your business meets the core criteria.
If it doesn’t, we’ll sit down with you and offer you guidance and advice that you can take away and apply to your business, so it eventually meets the SSIP requirements. Once your business passes our ten questions, you’ll receive a SMAS Worksafe certificate within 3-5 days which will be valid for 12 months and has the SSIP stamp of approval to show your business is eligible and operating to SSIP standards.
If you wish to sign up to be a member of SMAS, then visit our SSIP assessment page and start your application. The full registration assessment process will only ask you the questions you need to answer, helping you get certified in the most suitable way for your business and if you’re stuck with any of the questions you can give our team of in-house assessors a call and they will help guide you through the process.
SMAS is just one SSIP certification body and works in conjunction with many of the other members to support and improve levels of health and safety conformity across the UK. For those who already hold accreditation from other member schemes such as CHAS and Constructionline, we offer a Deem to Satisfy service which can take as little as two minutes to complete.
As well as offering businesses SSIP, SMAS Worksafe can also give your business support in other areas such as environmental and quality management.
Our Worksafe PQQ package will review your environmental and quality management systems against IEMA and IRCA standards, this is visible to clients on the SMAS Worksafe Portal and may give you the edge in the fight for contracts.
Showing clients you are environmentally safe and have quality management systems is reassurance to them that they’re hiring a trustworthy business that isn’t going to cause them issues with their supply chain.
Signing up to SMAS Worksafe PQQ improves the tendering process by:
Given that ISO 45001 is an occupational health and safety management scheme, ISO 45001 is closely related to the intention of the SSIP forum. SSIP criteria are aligned with ISO 45001 so those accredited will likely qualify for Deem to Satisfy with SSIP member schemes such as SMAS.
SMAS Worksafe Preferred Supplier is more closely aligned with the objectives of ISO 45001 in health and safety management so those who are interested in extending their compliance accreditation should consider completing the extra question set outlined in our Preferred Supplier scheme.
