As the mutual recognition scheme for occupational health and safety standards, SSIP is committed to ensuring a reduction in health and safety assessment costs in the supply chain.
The scheme has an excess of 82,000 suppliers registered with an SSIP Member Scheme. This information is readily accessible via the SSIP Portal, meaning that it is an easy way to find out if a supplier holds valid certification.
Read on to find out more about SSIP, how it can benefit your business, and how to get certified with SSIP.
What is SSIP?
SSIP stands for Safety Schemes in Procurement. It is an umbrella organisation that pulls together multiple occupational health and safety standards, particularly in construction.
SSIP helps to facilitate mutual recognition between health and safety pre-qualification schemes, saving time, effort, and the cost of multiple certifications for both suppliers and buyers.
What SSIP Helps You With
Having SSIP accreditation has large benefits for both suppliers and buyers. You can use your SSIP Registered Scheme certification to be recognised by other SSIP Member Schemes such as CHAS, SMAS, or Safe Contractor.
Suppliers with SSIP accreditation appear more credible to prospective clients. Suppliers are only required to be accredited by one SSIP scheme rather than obtaining multiple certificates from other schemes.
On the other hand, buyers only need to request evidence of SSIP accreditation to ensure they have met their legal requirements. Buyers can easily find and contact SSIP-accredited companies through the online portal.
Overall, obtaining an SSIP membership simplifies the process of tendering for all parties involved, saving time and money.
Why Get a Health and Safety Certification?
Some of the reasons to have a health and safety certification include:
- >Reduced operating costs: fewer incidents and ill health mean lower costs from legal fees and compensation
- Improved stakeholder relationships: make the health and property of staff, customers and supplies more of a priority and people will respond positively
- Legal compliance: understand how regulatory requirements impact your organisation and staff improved risk management: implementing measures to keep risk as low as possible
- Proven business credentials and globally recognised industry standards speak volumes
- Customer satisfaction and safety: Meet customer requirements consistently while safeguarding them
- Corporate social responsibility: the implementation of a structured management system can aid culture
How to Get Certified
If you have read through the above information and would like to know how to become certified with SSIP, then keep reading for the steps to certification.
Step One
Complete a Quote Request Form so that SSIP can understand your company and requirements. You can do this by completing either the online quick quote form or the online formal quote request form.
We will use this information to accurately define your scope of assessment and provide you with a proposal for certification.
Step Two
Once you’ve agreed to your proposal, you will be contacted to book your assessment with an NQA Assessor. This assessment will consist of two mandatory visits from the Initial Certification Audit.
Note that you must demonstrate that your management systems have been fully operational for a minimum of three months and have been subject to a management review and a full cycle of internal audits.
Step Three
Following a successful stage two audit, a certification decision is made, and if positive, certification to the required standard is issued by NQA. You will receive both a hard copy and a soft copy of the certificate.
The certification is valid for three years and is maintained through a program of annual surveillance audits and three yearly recertification audits.
How Beaconrisk Can Help You
At Beaconrisk, we are experts in accreditation support. Whatever accreditation you require, we can save you time, money, and hassle in achieving your desired accreditation. Read up on our blog post about the top 5 accreditations for the construction industry, where you can read more about the SafeContractor Accreditation and the CHAS Accreditation, for example.
All of our accreditations can be found on our website. If you need any help or advice from our experts at Beaconrisk, then do not hesitate to get in touch with us via our website; we are always happy to help.