News

14 November 2008

JSA Accreditation with CHAS

CHAS is a Contractors Health and Safety Scheme developed by local authority health and safety and procurement professionals with the support of the HSE.

The scheme is available for use by any public and private sector organisations when short listing contractors, suppliers and consultants (companies) who apply to work for them. The CHAS assessment is a rigorous process and accreditation demonstrates that the company has met all the requirements regarding The 1974 Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act, designer competence and compliance to the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 Code of Practice.

A fundamental principle of the CHAS scheme is to help any company to improve its safety management. This system means member organizations provide significant help to businesses to improve standards of health and safety compliance and management.

Benefits of the Scheme:·

It makes sure that a company is compliant with important parts of health and safety law.·
It means members do not have to repeat the effort of assessing health and safety compliance of applications for companies who have already been assessed to CHAS standards.·
Companies do not have to undergo health and safety assessments every time they apply to one of CHAS clients for work - clients will know they have been successfully assessed before.·
It will get rid of inconsistency where some contractors may be judged compliant by one employer but not others.

It is important to note that CHAS is not an approved or select list of contractors, and should not be used it in that way.

Purpose of the Procedure

The purpose is to provide assessment criteria that safety professionals can use for the health and safety element of a prequalification application.

The scheme assesses a company's:

1. health and safety policy statement;

2. organization for health and safety; and

3. specific health and safety arrangements to a standard acceptable to client and other users.

The CHAS assessment does not assess health and safety competence for specific types of work but concentrates on fundamental health and safety management and compliance issues.

The areas that are covered in a CHAS assessment are shown below.
*Not all areas of assessment will apply to all companies: it depends on the kind of work carried out by the company.

General Policy Statement	Organisation for Health and Safety	Health and Safety Training
Work Equipment	Health and Safety Training	Consultation Arrangements
First Aid	Fire & Emergency Procedures	Manual Handling
COSHH	Risk Assessment	Asbestos
Health Surveillance	Accident Reporting	Work Equipment
Personal Protective Equipment	Electrical Safety	Contractor Management
Workplace and Inspections	Fire Risk Assessment	Monitoring, Audit and Review