Back in March of this year, Rapid received its official CHAS acccreditation . Our Health and Safety Manager, Magda Oswiata, worked hard at achieving this status so we wanted to catch up with her to find out what it’s all about and how being CHAS accredited will benefit our customers…

What is CHAS?

CHAS (The Contractors’ Health and Safety Assessment Scheme), is the Foremost Authority on UK compliance, Risk Mitigation and Supply Chain Management. CHAS is a pre-approval scheme, which allows contractors to demonstrate to existing and potential clients, that they meet the required health and safety standards.

What does CHAS assess?

CHAS assesses your company’s Health & Safety Policy Statement, the organisation of your health and safety and your specific health and safety arrangements, to a standard which is acceptable to CHAS’s buyers and others.

Why did you think Rapid would benefit from becoming CHAS accredited?

CHAS is a nationally recognised accreditation scheme and there are a number of great benefits. One is that it can help with completing pre-qualification questionnaires – it reduces the time and effort, allowing more time to focus on other areas. It shows clients that we demonstrate a high level of compliance with health and safety law.

Being CHAS accredited can help provide opportunities to secure new and larger contracts. Registered organisations can access our business details from CHAS, meaning we can directly tender for those contracts. 

What did the process involve?

Applying for CHAS challenges you to think about your health and safety. It allows you to focus on and improve different aspects, before you come to submit the application. There is a series of questions that you have to answer, then you need to provide evidence that what you say actually happens. The CHAS team carried out a lengthy audit of our training records.

How will Rapid customers benefit from our CHAS accreditation?

First and foremost, our customers can be confident that we are compliant with the UK’s health and safety requirement – our policy, organisation and arrangements have all been audited. In addition to health and safety, our commitments and policies in relations to quality, environment, diversity and financial management are all reviewed by the CHAS assessor.

We have been awarded a Covid-19 best practice verification – what does this mean?

The CHAS Covid-19 verification confirms that we are compliant with all the government requirements regarding working safely during Covid-19.  Details of this can be seen on our website.