SSIP, CHAS, Constructionline
and what replaced PAS 91.

SSIP is an umbrella body for health and safety assessment schemes, and its point is mutual recognition: an assessment by one member scheme is generally accepted by another. CHAS and Constructionline are two of the schemes that assess you and issue the certificate. The Common Assessment Standard is broader pre-qualification covering finance, legal, quality and environmental as well, and it replaced PAS 91, which BSI withdrew in April 2023.

Three different things, constantly confused

Almost every firm that has tendered has been asked for some combination of these, and the schemes' own marketing does not make the distinction easy. There are three layers and they do different jobs.

So "we need SSIP" is shorthand for "we need a certificate from a scheme that is an SSIP member". You do not join SSIP. You are assessed by one of its members.

What mutual recognition actually saves you

This is the reason SSIP exists and the reason it is worth having, and it is worth understanding precisely because firms buy more assessments than they need.

Before it, a subcontractor working for six main contractors could be asked to hold six different health and safety accreditations, each with its own assessment and its own fee, all asking substantially the same questions. Mutual recognition means a main contractor accepting SSIP should accept your certificate from any member scheme rather than insisting on its own preferred one.

In practice it works most of the time and not always. Where a client insists on a specific scheme despite holding an SSIP-recognised certificate, it is worth pushing back once, politely, citing mutual recognition. A meaningful proportion of those requests are habit rather than policy.

Holding three health and safety accreditations is not three times as compliant. It is usually one accreditation and two invoices.

PAS 91 is gone, and plenty of tender documents have not noticed

PAS 91 was the publicly available specification setting a standard pre-qualification question set for construction. It was formally withdrawn by BSI in April 2023 and is no longer maintained.

What replaced it is the Common Assessment Standard, developed by Build UK with Constructionline. It builds on the same idea, a single question set so a firm is not answering the same thing repeatedly, and extends it to cover matters PAS 91 did not, including obligations arising from the Building Safety Act. Cabinet Office Procurement Policy Note 03/24 points public sector contracting authorities at it for construction works procurement.

Two practical consequences. If a tender document asks you for PAS 91, it is out of date, and the right response is to offer your Common Assessment Standard certification rather than to explain the standard is withdrawn. And if you are choosing what to invest in this year, certification against the Common Assessment Standard is the thing with a future rather than anything positioned as a PAS 91 equivalent.

Which do you actually need

Determined by who you want to work for, not by which scheme markets hardest. Four honest cases.

• Subcontracting to main contractors, health and safety asked for. One SSIP member scheme certificate. Which one matters less than having one, so pick on price and on assessment style.
• Tendering to public sector or larger private clients. The Common Assessment Standard, at the level they ask for. Assessment is offered at desktop and site-based levels through recognised bodies, and the level required rises with contract value and risk.
• A specific client with a specific requirement. Ask them what they accept before you buy anything. This one sentence saves more money than any comparison of schemes.
• Domestic and small commercial work only. Quite possibly none of it. Accreditation is a cost of entering supply chains that require it, and paying for one nobody has asked you for is a common early mistake.

What it costs, structurally

No figures here, because scheme fees vary by turnover band and are reviewed, and a number in an article read next year is worse than none. What does not change is the shape.

There is an annual assessment fee, usually banded by turnover or headcount. There is your own time preparing the evidence pack, which on a first assessment is substantial and on renewals much less. There is often a higher fee for site-based assessment than for desktop. And there is the cost of fixing whatever the assessment finds, which is a real cost and also the only part of this that makes your business better.

Get quotes from two or three member schemes before committing. The assessments cover common ground, and the prices are not the same.

What the assessment actually asks for

Whichever route, the evidence pack is broadly the same and it is the same material this site keeps returning to: your health and safety policy, risk assessments and method statements that are specific rather than generic, competence records for your people, accident and RIDDOR records, insurance, training and its renewal, plant inspection records, and evidence you monitor rather than merely document.

Firms fail on two things far more than any other. Generic RAMS that could describe any job, which is covered in RAMS that hold up. And evidence that is out of date on the day of assessment, which is the certificates that expire without anybody noticing.

Where to start, on Monday

Ask your three largest clients one question: what accreditation do you require from your supply chain, and do you accept SSIP mutual recognition. Write the answers down. Firms routinely discover they are paying for an accreditation nobody asks for and missing one that two clients require.

Then, if you hold more than one health and safety accreditation, work out why. Unless a specific client has genuinely refused mutual recognition in writing, one of them is a renewal you can stop.