Pre-qualification

Often ignored by most companies in Australia, pre-qualification is an essential component of an effective contractor management system. Not only is pre-qualifying your contractors before they start work a great safety control measure, it can also prevent a very expensive lawsuit in-case an incident occurs. Most contractor companies are non-compliant. When one of Australia’s largest property developers implemented a contractor pre-qualification system, they were surprised to discover that 91% of their contractors were non-compliant.

Pre-qualifying contractors gives you a chance to check whether the contractor is compliant as well as evaluate a potential contractor’s insurance status, Work Cover registration, and HSE compliance. This is all extremely important when it comes to making the right hiring decision or helping the contractors comply with the requirements.

Pre-qualification Challenges Faced By Companies

Pre-qualification is not an easy task. It is no wonder most companies ignore this step. Getting reliable information is the first challenge, and getting it from the contractor can take a lot of time. More often than not, the information you are provided with will still be unreliable and unverified.

The Benefits of Pre-qualification

A reliable pre-qualification system acts as a gatekeeper, giving you confidence and peace of mind when you have contractors working on site. It ensures that you are meeting your contractor obligations. With a good pre-qualification system in place, you should be able to check the following without a problem:

• Insurance Check: A good system lets you keep a record of contractor insurance details and alerts you when the insurance details require updating so that you can remind the contractors to update their insurance. This ensures that you don’t have contractors with expired insurance cover working on site at any time, as this poses a very expensive risk in case of an incident.

• Work Cover Registration Check: After checking and confirming a contractor’s work cover registration, a good system allows you to save the information and provides automatic tracking capabilities.

• HSE Check: A good system should make it possible to create a questionnaire to determine whether contractors meet all the compliance and pre-qualification requirements.