Safeguard is New Zealand's magazine for information, innovation and inspiration about workplace health, safety and wellbeing. The November/December 2021 issue explores all things pre-qualification - is it a tick box exercise or a useful tool?

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Pre-qualification: Contractors’ voices

‍Fiona Jones recently interviewed people from 14 different construction contracting organisations (small, medium and large). Learn what contractors think of health and safety pre-qualification.

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Pre-qualification: Practitioners’ views

‍Four health and safety practitioners were asked these questions:

• What is the client problem that third party H&S pre-qual addresses?

• How well does third party H&S pre-qual resolve that issue for clients?

• Other than third party H&S pre-qual, how else could the client problem be addressed instead?

• Debating topic: “Third party H&S pre-qualification is like ACC’s old WSMP scheme: an extensive documentation exercise which lacks evidence it reduces harm”.

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Barry Bignell, Executive GeneralManager, Zero Harm, Downer praised Tōtika and shared that Tōtika is beginning to address the main challenges the industry faces; namely the consistency of assessment, cost and resource reduction and the choice that contractors have. "It is not perfect but it is a big step forward. As a H&S community we can all help to improve it and to get it accepted across all industries, Government and local authorities to further embed the cost savings. That way, we can move quickly past pre-qualification to focus on what actually makes a difference."

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‍How does Tōtika work?‍

• Tōtika is an ‘umbrella’ scheme; we have independently approved NZ’s major pre-qualification assessment providers to provide a central contractor/supplier register
  
• We also recognise major certification and assessment schemes as an alternative to pre-qualification assessments

Learn more about Tōtika here.

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Request a free copy of this Safeguard issue

If you wish to read the stories about H&S pre-qualification and aren’t a Safeguard subscriber, visit the Safeguard website and request a free sample copy. Or, subscribe to the Safeguard magazine here.

This edition also features items on:

• Aftermath: a Paralympian on his work injury
• Road Science - winner of the Safety category
• Healthy Work - the power of listening
• Duayne Cloke - winner of the Practitioner category
• Wellbeing - three common errors