Rendall & Rittner is one of the largest property management companies operating across the UK. With a large and growing residential property portfolio, the company manages more than 80,000 individual units. Their innovative thinking sets them apart and enables them to deliver outstanding management to their clients and lessees. This is achieved through actively building the relationships with both clients and contractors on a daily basis.
Challenge
Explaining that the company faced several challenges, Vanessa Brandham, Head of Health & Safety at Rendall & Rittner, said: “With 80,000 units across the UK, keeping track of our contractors across each of our sites was a challenge. We are constantly developing initiatives to ensure that our day-to-day management is as effective as possible, which supports our plans to become the leading residential management property company in the UK.”
“As contractors come in all shapes and sizes, it is difficult and time consuming to assess the individual aspects of the complex work that they do. Generic questionnaires are not relevant or detailed enough for the jobs at hand which meant there was room for continuous improvement in our supply chain process.”
She continued: “Some providers offer a tiered system with different levels of health and safety accreditation, but again, this can be confusing for our property managers as it is not clear which contractors have which levels of accreditation. We wanted to standardise our process nationwide to comply with regulations, and to be as effective as possible.”
In summary, Rendall & Rittner were seeking a solution that would add support and specialised experience to their team, offering greater visibility of their supply chain to ensure that they were compliant throughout. Furthermore, to only hire contractors that had been pre-approved to the same benchmark of health and safety for the work that they needed.
Solution
SafeContractor offers an easy-to-use online portal which lists all of your existing contractors, as well as new ones you may need, in one easy-to-access location. As the leading UK health and safety accreditation, SafeContractor ensures that all these contractors are pre-approved with up-to-date insurance, as well as other regulated areas such as GDPR, modern slavery, anti-bribery and more.
All SSIP members work up to 14-point core criteria and most will then ask their contractors to submit insurance documents in addition. SafeContractor is one of the only health and safety accreditation schemes that goes beyond the core criteria to also ask contractors dynamic risk-based questions tailored to their business profile and types of work.
This helps contractors to articulate how they carry out the required work activity, which doesn’t just demonstrate their compliance to help mitigate risks; it allows buyer organisations to make better informed procurement decisions when considering who to invite on site. This is one of the reasons that SafeContractor is the required standard for so many health and safety conscious organisations.
Brandham continued: “The fact that SafeContractor accredit contractors for the specific type of work that they do, and how they do it, made them very appealing to work with.”
Outcome
SafeContractor has now been supporting Rendall & Rittner for a number of years by future-proofing their supply chain management through technology. This has supported their growth by a third, from 60,000 units to 80,000 in their property portfolio.
Brandham said: “By having a greater transparency of who is in our supply chain across multiple sites, we can ensure that we are compliant with the ever-increasing regulation in our industry. Furthermore, with SafeContractor we can now source contractors from their 33,000 members to fuel our national expansion.”
“The SafeContractor accreditation provides confidence for all of our business stakeholders, especially our property managers, as all of the contractors that we work have demonstrated their commitment to health and safety. This minimises the risk to our business and provides a solid foundation for our continued growth as a leading property management organisation.”
“We’re also able to give something back to our contractors as SafeContractor offers a huge range of benefits, from health and safety advice to discounts on materials, fuel, energy and more.”
