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  Dan Frazer Gardening March 16, 2011 at 6:33pm

  It's the housing association you should be asking as they require it, whether it's relevant or not!
• PRO

  Gary RK March 16, 2011 at 6:41pm

  Having recently dealt with a large housing association to obtain our Exor accreditation, the people who control the PQQs and Tenders do not often know or understand why.

  To them it is simply a 'tick' item that any prospective contractor needs to be consider. Full Stop. They often have no clue.  The people that do know are much much higher up the food chain and do not deal with the operational end of contracts.

  IMHO
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  AndyCharles-EnborneGardeningCo March 16, 2011 at 6:51pm

  Just out of interest, how many of these accreditations are there? It seems to me that a new one is mentioned almost every day on here. Surely there is duplication? If you consider the cost to business that acceditation involves, isn't this something the government could usefully address in it's drive to cut out red tape?
• PRO

  Gary RK March 16, 2011 at 6:55pm

  There is a move to level the field and ensure the schemes offer similar levels of conformance and are somewhat interchangable.  It will happen, just by market forces - but it takes time.

  Unfortunately, H&S is big business .....
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  Steve Sonic Grounds Maintenance March 16, 2011 at 8:03pm

  Totally agree.

  They basically said that they pick there contractors from construction line and that if i wish to be considered for work i need to be a member.

  Just cant understand that they pick grounds maintenance contractors from that database. Doesnt make sence to me!!

  
  
  Gary RK said:

  Having recently dealt with a large housing association to obtain our Exor accreditation, the people who control the PQQs and Tenders do not often know or understand why.

   

  To them it is simply a 'tick' item that any prospective contractor needs to be consider. Full Stop. They often have NO clue.

   

  The people that do know are much much higher up the food chain and do not deal with the operational end of contracts.

   

  IMHO
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  Andy Lawrence March 16, 2011 at 8:08pm

  Hi there,

   

  Sorry, just found this post.

  Please ignore my discussion piece up top.

  I don't see how this offers anything in terms of levelling the field, conformance or anything else. All it asks for is your business details, a few references...oh, and £90.

  Totally irrelevant to my business. They are trying to push this as a benefit to businesses but how is it?

  They stick you on a register and take your money, the end.

  For larger businesses in the contruction industry there are tenders you can go for, but that's no good to me.

  Total joke.

   

   
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  Steve Sonic Grounds Maintenance March 16, 2011 at 8:15pm

  I had a look through some of their database and found quite alot of housing associations are members of the site. But im not sure to what degree they use it.

  The way i understand it is if you are a supplier of a service then it costs FROM £90 per year and if you are a buyer of a service, say a housing association of management compant then it is free to join.

   
• PRO

  Brian www.mibservices.co.uk March 16, 2011 at 10:22pm

  They use it primarily as as PQQ system, saves them a lot of time.
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  Fenlandphil March 17, 2011 at 6:25am

  ISO9001 is the current one with engineering, basically it is a paperchase and costly.

  I would guess with this construction line thing, once you get started with them, the only way for the costs to go is up, as will be the time spent on compliance issues.

  You will need to work out if the additional costs both in the form of fees and time spent on compliance issues is outweighed by the additional work it is likely to bring in.
• PRO

  Gary RK March 17, 2011 at 9:19am

  Andy, I think you need to look at the big picture and decide what you want from your business first.

  While I agree that some of these accreditations appear unnecessary, they do allow larger companies to quickly weed out unsuitable businesses (from their prospective).

   Unfortunately, if you want to play with the big boys, you have play by big boy rules.

  Also to put it into prospective - £100-200 accrediation fees = 1 large contract can be worth over 5 figures pa.

  A good ROI ?  absolutely, as now we have already the opportunity to bid on another job.