Welcome to the Safety Schemes In Procurement (SSIP Forum) website. Where safety is at the heart of procurement.

Over the years, the proliferation of health and safety pre-qualification questionnaires has placed increasing burdens on small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) to repeatedly pre-qualify for both public and private sector work. For most SMEs, Stage 1 pre-qualification has become a source of excessive paperwork and significant cost. This situation has become an unacceptable business burden to many small contractors and in turn, leads to a negative view of health and safety in SMEs.

Members of the SSIP Forum have recognised this unnecessary duplication and individually moved towards reducing the business burden through 'deem to satisfy' or 'mutual recognition' arrangements between schemes. The SSIP Forum is publicising these arrangements through the launch of this website, which, I am sure, will give confidence to the construction industry that mutual recognition is happening.

The Forum acts as an umbrella organization for clients, contractors and consultants to facilitate further structured mutual recognition between schemes and others who carry out health and safety pre-qualification. Using an SSIP Forum pre-qualification scheme for a Stage 1 assessment enables clients to concentrate on Stage 2 of the procurement process. The SSIP Forum members are also committed to advise and influence clients, contractors and consultants about reasonable interpretation and appropriateness of health and safety competence standards in UK schemes. The Forum embraces the core guidance on competence and training in the Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007.