What this is
What is contractor prequalification?
What is contractor prequalification?
It is the assessment carried out before any work is awarded, to establish whether a contractor is capable of doing the work safely and lawfully and to set how tightly they will be managed on site. It gathers the company's arrangements rather than the individuals' credentials: policy, safety management, competence systems, equipment regimes, high-risk capability and, on a food site, hygiene practice. The output is a score, a tier and a recommendation on approval.
What does prequalification not prove?
That the people who actually turn up are competent. A contractor can hold ISO 45001, an in-house safety advisor and a documented equipment regime, and still send an agency fitter who has never entered a confined space. Prequalification assesses the organisation; competence is verified person by person at the gate, which is a separate record and where most contractor incidents were preventable.
Who should score the questionnaire?
The contract owner, with safety input on the technical sections and the scope of work in front of them. Scored by procurement alone it becomes a document-completeness check, because the scorer cannot judge whether a generic method statement is adequate for the work being bought. The record carries both a reviewer and a contract owner signature for that reason, and they are not the same judgement.
Scope
When is a contractor prequalification questionnaire required?
Prequalification is the first gate in the contractor lifecycle and the only one that happens before money is committed. Its boundaries matter because almost everything it touches has a dedicated record downstream: answers collected here are inputs to those records, not substitutes for them.
Use this template when
- A contractor is being considered for site work and has not been assessed, or was assessed for materially different work
- An existing contractor is bidding for a category of work outside what they were approved for
- The scope, hazards or site have changed enough that the original assessment no longer describes the exposure
- A tender list is being assembled and needs filtering before commercial evaluation begins
- A contractor's arrangements have visibly changed, through acquisition, loss of safety resource or a shift to subcontracted delivery
Do not use it for
- Verifying injury rates, citation history and the experience modifier, which is the Contractor Safety Statistics Review and needs figures traced to source rather than declared
- Verifying insurance, which needs the certificate, the limits and the entity name checked in the Insurance Certificate Record and Insurance Adequacy Review
- Confirming a named individual holds the ticket for the task, which is the Contractor Competency Verification and happens per person, not per company
- Assigning the management regime, which is the Contractor Risk Classification, and taking the decision, which is the Contractor Approval Record
- Refreshing an existing approval, which is the Prequalification Renewal Record and should run on expiry dates rather than a rescored questionnaire
Compliance mapping
Which ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4 requirements does this satisfy?
No jurisdiction prescribes a prequalification questionnaire. What they prescribe is that the host satisfy itself before letting someone work, and that duty survives the contract: after an incident the question is what you checked, not what was claimed.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Coordination with contractors before work, hazards arising from contractor activities identified, and criteria for contractor selection applied | Header |
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.3 | Control of outsourced functions and processes, including work passed to subcontractors and workers supplied by labour providers | Company details |
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.1 | Procurement processes coordinated so that purchased processes and services conform to the management system's requirements | Safety management |
| OSHA 29 CFR 1910.119(h)(2) | Host employer to obtain and evaluate information on the contract employer's safety performance and programmes, and inform them of process hazards | Safety management |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.2 | Competence determined and evidenced for workers whose work can affect OH&S performance, including those under the organisation's control | People |
| OSHA 29 CFR 1910.147(f)(2) | Outside personnel engaged in servicing to have their energy control programme exchanged with and understood by the host | Equipment and high risk work |
| BRCGS Food Safety cl.3.5 | Approval and monitoring of suppliers of services on the basis of risk, including contracted services performed in production areas | Food site specific |
| CDM 2015 reg.8 | Anyone appointing a contractor to take reasonable steps to satisfy themselves it has the skills, knowledge, experience and organisational capability | Result |
What it does not cover
- Insurance verification, which needs the certificate itself, the indemnity limits checked against the work and the insured entity matched to the trading name, none of which this questionnaire asks for.
- Safety performance verification, which needs injury rates, enforcement history and experience modifier traced to the insurer or regulator rather than declared, and read across several years.
- Individual competency verification, which happens at the gate against the ticket and the person, and is the only control addressing who actually performs the task.
- The approval decision, which belongs in the Contractor Approval Record with its scope, conditions and expiry, and which a score alone should never confer.
- Task-level control, which lives in the method statement review, the permit to work and the pre-work meeting, where the hazards of this job on this day are addressed.
Global
Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire requirements by country
Every regime places a duty on the host as well as the contractor, and none of them accepts the contract as a transfer of that duty. What differs is how explicitly the pre-award check is written down.
29 CFR 1910.119(h) for covered processes; 29 CFR 1910.147(f)(2); OSHA Multi-Employer Citation Policy CPL 02-00-124
Prequalification is explicit only under process safety management, but controlling and host employers can be cited for hazards affecting another employer's workers.
On a PSM site the file must show evaluation, not collection; off it, the multi-employer policy makes a contractor's exposure your citation.
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3; Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 reg.11; CDM Regulations 2015 regs 4 and 8
A duty to persons not employed, a duty to co-operate and co-ordinate where workplaces are shared, and an appointment duty for construction work.
CDM reg.8 makes the pre-award check a named duty of the appointer, so the questionnaire and what was done with it evidences whether reasonable steps were taken.
Framework Directive 89/391/EEC art.6(4); Directive 92/57/EEC on temporary or mobile construction sites
Employers sharing a workplace must co-operate on protection and prevention and co-ordinate their measures.
Co-ordination binds both parties, and national transpositions often add a written co-ordination document that a questionnaire does not replace.
Provincial OHS Acts and regulations, including prime contractor and owner duties
Where multiple employers work at one site, one party carries co-ordinating duties for the whole workplace in most provinces.
Prequalification feeds the prime contractor's own defence, so the record must show what was assessed and what conditions were placed on access.
Model WHS Act ss.19 and 46; Model WHS Regulations
The primary duty covers workers whose activities the business influences or directs, and duty holders must consult, co-operate and co-ordinate with each other.
Contractor workers sit inside the host's primary duty, so a questionnaire producing no conditions and no supervision decision leaves that duty unaddressed.
ISO 45001:2018 cl.8.1.4 and cl.7.2
Procurement, contractor and outsourcing controls are explicit management system requirements, with selection criteria applied and coordination documented.
Auditors read your criteria, then look for a contractor engaged despite failing them, which is the fastest route to a finding on this clause.
How to complete it
How to complete a contractor prequalification questionnaire, step by step
The questionnaire returns a percentage whatever is entered, and the contractor has every incentive to make it high. Four judgements by the scorer decide whether the record assessed anything.
Name the answers that require a document before scoring: the signed policy, the certification certificate with its scope page, statutory inspection reports, competency records for each declared high-risk activity. Score the rest on the declaration and accept that you are doing so. An unevidenced answer scored as met converts the contractor's optimism into your record, and your record is what gets read after an incident.
The tier is a property of the task, not of the company: a two-person firm changing ammonia valves is very high risk and a large facilities contractor cleaning offices is not. Set it from the scope, then let it decide the pass mark, which sections are mandatory and how much is verified. Feeding it into the score instead hands the riskiest contractors a handicap they cannot remove, and the number stops being comparable across categories.
The food-site and high-risk sections apply to some contractors and not others, and items marked not applicable leave the denominator. An IT supplier answering the allergen and glass questions either loses points for hazards it will never meet or gains them for free, and both distort the tier. Decide from the work category which sections are in scope before the questionnaire goes out, and record the exclusions so the score can be read later.
Approving with conditions is the most useful outcome the form offers and the easiest to waste. A condition living only in this record has no effect on the person at the gate. Each one has to land somewhere operational: the approval record's scope, the induction, the permit, or a named escort requirement. A condition that cannot be expressed as something a supervisor will check is a reservation, and the honest answer there is no.
What auditors find
Most common contractor prequalification questionnaire findings
Prequalification findings divide cleanly. Either the questionnaire was never completed and work went ahead anyway, or it was completed, scored well, and nothing in it was tested.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Contractor working on site with no returned questionnaire; work released on a purchase order. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Gate site access on the prequalification record, not the commercial approval. |
| All questions answered affirmatively, with no evidence attached where evidence was requested. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.1 | Score unevidenced answers as not met and request the named documents before closing. |
| Questionnaire scored by procurement with no safety input and no sight of the scope of work. | CDM 2015 reg.8 | Require the contract owner and a competent reviewer to sign, with the scope attached. |
| Subcontractors used routinely; none of the subcontractors had ever been assessed or declared. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.3 | Require a subcontractor declaration naming each firm, and assess any that will be on site. |
| High-risk activities declared, but the competency question left blank and the record still scored a pass. | ISO 45001 cl.7.2 | Make the competency and rescue answers mandatory whenever a high-risk activity is selected. |
| Contractor never informed of the site's process hazards before mobilising to a covered process. | OSHA 29 CFR 1910.119(h)(2) | Issue the hazard and emergency information with the award and record its receipt. |
| Contractor applying its own isolation devices with no coordination of the two energy control programmes. | OSHA 29 CFR 1910.147(f)(2) | Exchange lockout procedures at prequalification and confirm the arrangement at the pre-work meeting. |
| Prequalification three years old; the named safety advisor had left and two statutory inspections were overdue. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Drive renewal from the earliest expiry on the file, not the anniversary of the score. |
| Result band shows a pass while a critical item, such as statutory inspections, scored zero. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Define veto items that fail the questionnaire whatever the weighted total says. |
| Approved with conditions that appear nowhere in the induction, the permit or the access authorisation. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Transfer each condition to the approval record and induction, and make access contingent on it. |
Case in point
Case in point: the contractor who scored eighty-four and sent someone else
A dairy site put its refrigeration maintenance out to tender and prequalified three firms. The winner scored eighty-four per cent: ISO 45001 certified, an external safety consultant, task-specific method statements, documented equipment inspection and extensive food industry experience. Against use of agency or casual labour it answered occasionally, which scored one point and made no difference to the band. Nobody followed it up.
Nine months later a technician released ammonia while isolating a plant room suction line. He was agency labour, placed through a firm the site had never assessed, on his second day. His confined-space and ammonia handling records sat at the agency and had never been requested. The contractor's method statement was task specific and correct, and the person following it had never been trained on it.
The prequalification was not wrong about the contractor. It answered a question about a company while the exposure came from an individual sourced somewhere the questionnaire saw for one point on one line. The corrective actions that held were an agency and subcontractor declaration naming every supplying firm, competency verification at the gate for any high-risk task, and a rule that agency use forces the tier up rather than nudging the score down.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
7 sections
- Reference
- CON-001
- Archetype
- Assessment
- Record ID
- PREQ-2026-000
- Scoring
- Weighted percent, tier
- Direction
- High is good
- Singleton
- No
- Basis
- ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4
- Links
- Links Vendor
- Tags
- Contractor, Prequalification
- Sections
- 7
- Fields
- 68
- Follow up fields
- 3
- Repeating sections
- 0
- Links out
- 4
Header
15 fieldsQuestionnaire ID*
Auto sequence. Format CPQ-2026-000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
Drives who this goes to next.
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Date and Time*
Completed By*
Site*
Site ID*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Contractor*
Vendor ID*
Format VEN-0000.
Links to FDN-005 Vendor ID
Work Category*
Mechanical, electrical, refrigeration, civil, cleaning, catering, transport, IT or professional services.
Risk Tier*
Set by the work they do, not by how big the company is.
- Low3 pts
- Medium2 pts
- High1 pt
- Very high0 pts
Contract Owner*
Proportionate To The Risk
A window cleaner and an ammonia contractor should not answer the same questionnaire. Ask more of the people doing work that could kill somebody, and less of everybody else.
Sent Date*
Returned Date
Completed By At Contractor
Company details
6 fieldsYears Trading
Number Of Employees
Legal Entity Verified*
Check the company actually exists and the name on the quote matches the name on the insurance.
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Trades Or Services Offered*
Uses Agency Or Casual Labour*
- No3 pts
- Occasionally1 pt
- Routinely0 pts
Uses Subcontractors*
- No3 pts
- Occasionally1 pt
- Routinely0 pts
Safety management
9 fieldsWritten Safety Policy*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Policy Signed By Senior Person*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Named Safety Advisor*
- In house qualified4 pts
- External consultant3 pts
- None0 pts
Certified Management System*
- ISO 450014 pts
- Other scheme2 pts
- None0 pts
Third Party Accreditation Held
- Yes3 pts
- No1 pt
Risk Assessment Process Documented*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Method Statements Produced*
- Task specific4 pts
- Generic1 pt
- None0 pts
Permit To Work Understanding*
- Strong3 pts
- Basic1 pt
- None0 pts
Incident Investigation Process*
- Documented3 pts
- Informal1 pt
- None0 pts
People
6 fieldsCompetency Records Maintained*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Induction Given To Own Staff*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Training Records Available On Request*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Health Surveillance Where Required
- Yes3 pts
- Not required3 pts
- No0 pts
Drug And Alcohol Policy*
- Yes, with testing3 pts
- Policy only2 pts
- None0 pts
Right To Work Checks Performed*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Equipment and high risk work
6 fieldsEquipment Inspection Regime*
- Documented and scheduled3 pts
- Informal1 pt
- None0 pts
Statutory Inspections Current*
- Yes3 pts
- One overdue1 pt
- Several overdue0 pts
PPE Provided To Own Staff*
- Yes, all3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
High Risk Activities Undertaken
Working at height, confined space, hot work, energy isolation, lifting, excavation or electrical.
Specific Competencies Held For Those
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Rescue Arrangements Where Applicable
- Yes3 pts
- Not applicable3 pts
- No0 pts
Food site specific
7 fieldsThey Are Working Above Your Product
A contractor who has never worked in a food plant will bring a wooden ladder and a pocket full of loose screws. Ask before they arrive, not afterwards.
Food Industry Experience*
- Extensive4 pts
- Some2 pts
- None0 pts
Understands GMP Requirements*
- Yes3 pts
- Basic1 pt
- No0 pts
Tool Accountability Practice*
- Documented3 pts
- Informal1 pt
- None0 pts
Food Grade Materials Used Where Required*
- Yes3 pts
- Sometimes1 pt
- No0 pts
Glass And Brittle Plastic Awareness*
- Yes3 pts
- Basic1 pt
- No0 pts
Allergen Awareness
- Yes3 pts
- Basic1 pt
- No0 pts
Result
19 fieldsItems Assessed*
Excludes anything marked N/A.
Items Failed*
Score Percent*
Calculated on submission. High is good. N/A items leave the denominator.
Result Band*
- Pass3 pts
- Caution1 pt
- Fail0 pts
Completeness Percent*
How much of the template was actually answered. A high score on a half completed form is not a high score.
Questionnaire Complete*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Evidence Attached Where Requested*
- Yes, all3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Gaps Identified
Further Information Requested*
- No3 pts
- Yes1 pt
Proceeds To Approval*
- Yes3 pts
- With conditions2 pts
- No0 pts
Approval Record ID
Links to CON-004 Approval ID
Action Required*
Raise the action record, then enter its reference here.
- No2 pts
- Yes0 pts
Priority
- High0 pts
- Medium1 pt
- Low3 pts
CAPA ID
Format CAPA-2026-00000.
Links to FDN-014 CAPA ID
Action Owner
Reviewer*
Signature*
Contract Owner*
Second Signature*
CON-001 · record IDs look like PREQ-2026-000 · Links Vendor
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
The questionnaire is the easy part. What fails is everything after it: the certificate that expired in month four, the subcontractor nobody declared, the condition of approval that never reached the gate.
Holds prequalification against the vendor register, drives renewal from the earliest expiry on file, and blocks access where the record is missing or lapsed.
Reads returned questionnaires against the declared scope, flags contradictions such as high-risk activities without competencies, and drafts the conditions the approval should carry.
Connects the declared high-risk activities to the permits, isolation procedures and rescue arrangements they will require once the contractor is on site.
Verifies competence for the individuals who actually attend, agency and subcontracted workers included, against the tickets the declared work demands.
This template lives in KnowContractor — contractor management. Prequalification, approval, induction, permits and performance.
Meet KnowContractor→Glossary
Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire definitions and key terms
- Prequalification
- Assessment of a contractor's arrangements and capability before work is awarded, deciding eligibility to bid and the depth of management once engaged.
- Risk tier
- The management level assigned from the hazards of the work to be performed, which should set verification depth and supervision rather than adjust the score.
- Self-declaration
- An answer supplied by the contractor without supporting evidence: valid as a starting point, worthless as a conclusion once scored as though verified.
- Skills, knowledge and experience
- The capability test written into CDM 2015 for anyone appointed to construction work, applied to the organisation as well as the individual.
- Multi-employer workplace
- A site where more than one employer's workers meet the same hazards, where host, controlling, creating and exposing employers each carry duties.
- Experience modification rate
- An insurance-derived index comparing a contractor's claims history to its industry: useful as a signal, unreliable as a ranking for very small firms.
- Method statement
- The contractor's written account of how a task will be performed safely, which is either task specific or a template with a job title on it.
- Statutory inspection
- An examination required by regulation at a fixed interval, such as lifting equipment or pressure systems, whose validity is a date, not a judgement.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about contractor prequalification questionnaire
Can we accept a third-party prequalification scheme instead of our own questionnaire?+
Accept it as evidence, not as the decision. Schemes verify that documents exist and are current, which saves real effort on policy, insurance and certification. What they cannot do is assess fit to your hazards, your product or your site, so scheme membership plus a short site-specific set on high-risk work and hygiene beats either alone.
How long is a prequalification valid?+
Twelve months for the questionnaire, and less for the items inside it. Insurance, statutory inspections and certification carry their own expiry dates, and one of those fails before the score goes stale. Drive renewal from the earliest expiry on file rather than the anniversary, or the record looks current on a certificate that lapsed four months ago.
Do we prequalify emergency callouts?+
Yes, in a reduced form, and escort them. The realistic control for a firm arriving at two in the morning to a failed compressor is a short verification of insurance and competence, a permit, and a named person who stays with them. Complete the full questionnaire afterwards if they will be used again, and record the engagement so the exception stays visible.
Should we score the risk tier into the percentage?+
No. The tier describes the work and the score describes the contractor, and combining them penalises a very high risk contractor for the job it was invited to quote. Use the tier to select which sections apply, set the pass mark, and decide how much is verified rather than declared. The score then becomes comparable within a category, which is the only comparison worth making.
Can a contractor fail on a single answer?+
It should be able to. Name the veto items in advance: no written policy, several statutory inspections overdue, no competency records for a declared high-risk activity, no right-to-work checking. Those are not points on a scale, they are conditions of entry, and a percentage that lets a contractor average its way past them does the opposite of its job.
What should we do with a contractor who scores well but has a poor incident history with us?+
Trust the history. Prequalification measures declared arrangements, the performance scorecard measures what happened on your site, and where they disagree the observed record wins. Feed performance and violation records into the renewal, and read a strong questionnaire from a contractor with repeat findings as proof that the questionnaire is measuring paperwork.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Contractor Onboarding and Management
Contractor Safety Statistics Review
Reviews a contractor's injury rates, citations and experience modifier over recent years
Contractor Risk Classification
Classifies a contractor by the risk of the work they do, from low risk services to high risk construction
Contractor Approval Record
Records the decision to approve a contractor to work on site
Contractor Safety Program Review
Reviews the contractor's own written safety programme against your requirements
Subcontractor Declaration
Records any subcontractors a contractor intends to use
Prequalification Renewal Record
Renews a contractor's prequalification before it expires
More in Prequalification
Contractor Safety Statistics Review
Reviews a contractor's injury rates, citations and experience modifier over recent years
Contractor Risk Classification
Classifies a contractor by the risk of the work they do, from low risk services to high risk construction
Contractor Approval Record
Records the decision to approve a contractor to work on site
Contractor Safety Program Review
Reviews the contractor's own written safety programme against your requirements
Subcontractor Declaration
Records any subcontractors a contractor intends to use
Prequalification Renewal Record
Renews a contractor's prequalification before it expires
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- ISO 45001:2018 clauses 8.1.4 and 7.2
- OSHA 29 CFR 1910.119(h), contractors under process safety management (US)
- OSHA 29 CFR 1910.147(f)(2), outside personnel and energy control (US)
- OSHA Multi-Employer Citation Policy CPL 02-00-124 (US)
- Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, regulations 4 and 8 (GB)
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, reg.11 (GB); Model WHS Act ss.19 and 46 (Australia); BRCGS Food Safety cl.3.5
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.