Health & Safety Prequal Management

Thursday July 1, 2021 15:46

Welcome to the latest update from Securo New Zealand.

In this update we are going to examine health and safety prequal management systems.

A number of Securo clients will be familiar with some of these systems that have gained rapid traction amongst a number of large organisations, particularly following the demise of the ACC Workplace Safety Management programmes (WSMP).

To organisations, ACC WSMP certification provided an assurance to customers, contractors, suppliers, peers and the general public that they had an effective Health and Safety System in place.

For many clients this has left a gap of recognition for their level of compliance to Health and Safety requirements.

Currently prequal systems include:

• Sitewise (Construction Industry – Construction Health and Safety NZ CHASNZ)
• Impac Prequal
• Safe 365 (District Area Health Boards)
• SafePlus
• SHE Prequalification

These prequal systems work on the basis that the contracting organisation requires to be assured that the contractor has an effective Health and Safety system in place and, therefore, make Prequal qualification part of the purchase decision.
The contractor is then required to sign up to the prequal scheme at their cost and submit evidence of their H&S practices. Depending on the scheme it must be renewed every year or every two years.

The major criticism of these prequal schemes is that not one of them is universally recognised. This leads to the unfortunate situation where a company may be required to purchase and comply with one or more different prequal systems to gain work as a contractor to large organisations.

The only recognised national and international certification for H&S is an accredited certification to an International Standard such as AS/NZS4801 - 2001, ANZS18001 – 2007 or ISO45001 – 2018. AS/NZS4801 and 18001 have largely been withdrawn and replaced by 45001.

There are some large companies in New Zealand that have gained certification to ANZS45001 – 2018, but many SME’s find the work involved too much and the cost prohibitive.

Recently, a new umbrella scheme has been introduced called TOTIKA which is hoped to encompass many of the prequals and be much more widely accepted.
The name Totika come from the Maori – Correct/Effectiveness.
It is a single framework developed by industry (CHASNZ) and Government that brings many health and safety pre-qualifications together under one umbrella to make the process cheaper and quicker for everyone.

If, as a Securo client, you have been asked to complete a prequal to gain contract work and require some help, then your Securo consultant can make the process much easier and/or you want to find out more about the Totika process, then please contact Securo on Telephone 0800 55 33 44.