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Are you prepared for contractor pre-qualification?

Blog
Charlie Holland
14 Aug 2024

Public bodies should now use the Common Assessment Standard for contractor pre-qualification, says Cabinet Office

Pre-qualification is a means of ensuring that any providers you use meet certain requirements around insurance, health & safety and other criteria. There are a number of different pre-qualification standards, and so the Cabinet Office has now mandated in a recent Procurement Policy Note 03/24 that Public Sector should use the Common Assessment Standard (CAS). As the name suggests, this was developed to overcome the issue of multiple standards.

Raising compliance standards and reducing supply chain risk

YPO is committed to complying with government guidance and we are being supported by Veriforce CHAS to streamline the pre-qualification process for providers who want to participate in our construction solutions providers to ensure that we have vison of your most up to date compliance data.

By using a recognised accreditation body and the Common Assessment Standard (CHAS Elite), we aim to raise the compliance standards of providers on our framework solutions and to ensure that they are competent, complying to industry standards, including health and safety accreditations, insurances and appropriate environmental and quality management structures.

What is the Common Assessment Standard (such as CHAS Elite)?

The Common Assessment Standard is an accreditation designed to standardise the prequalification process, helping both clients and providers improve supply chain efficiency, reduce supply chain risks, and find reliable business opportunities.

The Common Assessment Standard builds on the earlier PAS 91 prequalification questionnaire (now retired), helping providers achieve compliance and mitigate risks across 13 key areas of risk management. To achieve certification, you need to evidence your compliance in these areas once a year. This can all be achieved via any of the five recognised assessment bodies, which includes VeriforceOne, CHAS’s intuitive, easy-to-use, online providers portal.

With the Common Assessment Standard, you can achieve compliance and certification without the need for repetitive time-consuming processes, multiple assessment bodies, and confusing requirements.

If you have achieved The Common Assessment Standard with another recognised assessment body, you can now register this with CHAS and benefit from a CHAS membership for free by opening a CHAS Foundation account and data sharing the information from your chosen approved CAS recognised assessment body.

Simplifying pre-qualification for our providers

YPO, with the support of CHAS aim to reduce the time and cost associated with providers completing our prequalification questionnaire . There will no longer be any need to issue copies of insurance documents and SSIP accreditation etc. via email as this will be visible to us via the CHAS portal.

Delivering additional value to providers

By joining the Veriforce CHAS family, you join over 32,500 providers and gain visibility with a network of over 2,500 clients across the UK.

Veriforce CHAS members also get access to exclusive benefits such as discounted business insurance, discounted van hire, discounted tool and equipment hire and much more.

How do I sign up?

1) If you are already accredited to CHAS Elite then you do not need to do anything further other than maintain accreditation.

2) If you are registered but are not accredited to the required membership level, please visit www.chas.co.uk to login to the CHAS portal (now called VeriforceONE) and follow the upgrade option using the code YPO2024.

3) If you are not registered on the CHAS portal, please take the following steps:
• Please visit www.chas.co.uk and click ‘Join CHAS’ to start your sign up process.
• Please use code YPO2024 when prompted for a code as reason for signing up, this will help us identify you and assign you to our supply chain.

If you would like to discuss your application, please contact CHAS at www.chas.co.uk or to speak to someone at YPO about this initiative, please contact [email protected] .

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Author

Charlie Holland

Category Buyer for Highways

YPO