Subcontractor competence checklist. A printable checklist for assessing a subcontractor before they start — organisational capability, insurance, RAMS, the people they are sending and the evidence behind each.

CDM 2015 requires anybody appointing a contractor to take reasonable steps to satisfy themselves that the contractor has the skills, knowledge, training and experience for the work. In practice that becomes a folder of certificates nobody reads, which satisfies nothing and evidences less.

The distinction this sheet insists on is between organisational capability and the people turning up. A firm with faultless accreditation can send two people who have never done this task, and a sole trader with no accreditation at all can be the most competent person on site. The checklist asks both questions because the answer to one tells you nothing about the other.

Accreditation is recorded as what it verifies rather than as a tick. The SSIP schemes assess a contractor's health and safety management arrangements to a common standard; they are not a warranty that a particular gang is competent for a particular task, and treating them as one is the most common misreading in the industry.

Cards get their own line for the same reason. A card shows a scheme has checked something about that person — and what it has checked varies by card. It is evidence to weigh, not an answer, and a checklist that ticks 'card seen' has recorded that somebody owns a card.