This January, we’re yet again involved in the now constant process of updating the collection of accreditations we’ve held over the years, to ensure we stay compliant with industry regulations. We have Constructionline Gold, SafeContractor (Alcumus) and CHAS (Veriforce). (We also have ISO, but that’s a different discussion.) As time has passed, and the information demanded has become more complicated, the job of keeping them up-to-date has almost become a role in itself. And to be honest they don’t seem speed up the tender process as was initially promised, because we still have to fill in pages and pages of company details on every tender despite submitting these certificates alongside our bids.

Not to mention the costliness of each scheme – all these fees plus ISO add up to well over £5,000 annually.

A quick look around LinkedIn brings up a whole tertiary industry of consultants offering to achieve these accreditations on your behalf if you don’t have time, as a paid service. If SMEs and sole traders are unable to achieve them without outside help due to the enormous amount of time it takes to assemble and upload paperwork evidence, they become meaningless, just another way in which small and medium construction enterprises are at a default disadvantage compared to the larger concerns who have more in-house admin support.

So, in 2026, do we need them all? Historically, certain clients have required them as mandatory, but over the last two years we’ve only had requests for Constructionline Gold. Constructionline now offers SSIP accreditation (for which we’ve historically relied on SafeContractor) and is far and away the better interface compared with SafeContractor and CHAS which are incredibly dated and clunky to use. That said, much of the same evidence of our processes is required for all three.

If you’re a client or in procurement, are you aware of the differences between them? Do you insist on any in particular? If so, why?

Or, if you represent any of these accreditations, please enlighten us on what makes yours essential.

See our Linkedin post for responses from our contemporaries