Gary Duce

If you bring third party contractors or service providers onto your site or premises, you have a legal duty to ensure they are fully qualified and competent to carry out their work. So how do you comply with CDM regulations, HSE legislation and help avoid incidents, fines and prosecutions brought about by unqualified contractors working on your site? 

HSE legislation and CDM Regulations require all facilities and site managers to verify the qualifications of every contractor coming onto site. The consequences of an incident occurring as the result of admitting an inadequately qualified person onto site could be disastrous, ranging from operational disruption to personal prosecution. These could have considerable financial and reputational implications for an organisation and could result in criminal charges being brought against directors.

Verifying a contractor is appropriately trained and competent to perform their job on site has, in the past, required manual checking of the original certificates and qualification documents of each individual entering your site. Qualifications and the subsequent checks also need to be specific to the work the contractor is doing.  For example, contractors working at height need to have appropriate training, as well as their trade qualifications. Workers in many older buildings, including many public buildings such as hospitals and schools, will need Asbestos Awareness training, as there is a potential risk of disturbing asbestos in buildings constructed or refurbished before the use of asbestos was banned.

Site managers and their teams need to be able to judge whether a contractor’s documentation is up to date and relevant, including which additional pieces of training each contractor requires to complete their work. Records also need to be kept to provide evidence that these essential checks have been carried out. If the worst happens and an incident does occur, the site manager needs a fully auditable record of who has been on site and that their competences were checked.

Reset enables facilities and site managers to check the credentials of any Reset Individual cardholders in an instant, via any internet-enabled device, for free. No specialist knowledge is needed to carry out the competence checks, as a simple traffic-light system will indicate any qualifications that have expired.

Gary Duce, MD of Reset Certification Scheme