SMAS Worksafe: what it is and when public buyers accept it

SMAS Worksafe is a health and safety assessment scheme and a member of SSIP. Like the other member schemes — CHAS, SafeContractor, Acclaim — its assessment is checked against the SSIP core criteria, and mutual recognition means a current SMAS Worksafe certificate satisfies a tender that asks for "CHAS or equivalent SSIP scheme".

Where you'll meet it

SMAS is strongest in construction supply chains: main contractors and housebuilders commonly require subcontractors to hold a Worksafe certificate before they can start on site. Public buyers name it less often than CHAS, but that does not matter — when a council or housing association asks for CHAS or an SSIP equivalent, SMAS Worksafe is that equivalent. If a buyer's questionnaire asks for "CHAS" by name, answer with the substance: scheme name, SSIP membership, registration number, expiry date, and your entry on the SSIP portal.

What the assessment involves

A desktop review of your health and safety documentation against the SSIP core criteria: policy (with the structure the law expects once you have five or more employees), risk assessments and method statements for the work you actually do, training and competence evidence, accident and incident reporting, and current insurances. Very small firms are assessed proportionately. Submissions go through an online portal, an assessor raises clarifications rather than failing you outright, and certification runs for twelve months.

Cost and time

Fees are banded by employee count and change from time to time; check the SMAS site for current prices, and expect the low hundreds of pounds a year for a small firm — SMAS has historically priced keenly against the other schemes, which is one reason main contractors adopted it widely. Turnaround is driven by your paperwork, not the scheme: organised documentation commonly clears assessment within days to a couple of weeks.

Choosing between SMAS and the others

The scheme brand matters less than holding one current SSIP assessment and keeping it renewed — a lapse mid-tender scores against you at the moment the evaluator checks. If your work is mostly subcontracting to main contractors, SMAS's prevalence in construction supply chains is a genuine tiebreaker; if your customers are councils, CHAS's name recognition saves a sentence of explanation. Either way, hold one, not two — the comparison in CHAS vs SSIP explains why paying twice buys nothing.