Constructionline Gold: what the assessment actually asks for

Silver, Gold and Platinum in one paragraph

Silver is a verified pre-qualification questionnaire — company details, financials, insurance. Gold adds a desktop assessment against the Common Assessment Standard, which looks at your policies and the evidence that they are working. Platinum adds a site-based assessment on top of Gold. Most main contractors and housing associations that name Constructionline ask for Gold.

What Gold typically asks you to evidence

The question set changes, so always check the current version in your portal, but you should expect to be asked about:

• Health and safety — policy, arrangements, competent advice, risk assessments, COSHH, accident statistics, training matrix
• Environmental management — policy and how you control waste, pollution and resources
• Quality management — how you check work is done right, and what happens when it is not
• Equality, diversity and inclusion
• Modern slavery and anti-bribery — policies and how they reach your supply chain
• Data protection and information security
• Business continuity
• Corporate social responsibility and sustainability
• Drug and alcohol policy
• Financial standing — accounts and insurance

Depending on your trade and size the list can run to seventy or more items. None of it is difficult on its own. It is the volume, and the fact that every policy needs to be current, signed and backed by something that proves it is in use.

Where contractors fall down

Policies with no evidence behind them

A policy that says you train staff needs a training record. A policy that says you vet subcontractors needs a completed vetting form. The assessor is looking for the second document, not the first.

Out-of-date documents

Anything not reviewed and signed in the last twelve months tends to be queried. That includes policies you wrote for Silver.

Copied policies that name the wrong company

It happens more often than you would think. One reference to somebody else's business undoes the whole document.

Answering the question you expected, not the one asked

Each question has its own evidence requirement. Reusing the same attachment for five questions usually gets four of them queried.

How long it takes

If your policies are current and your evidence is organised, Gold is a few days' work. If you are starting from Silver with little written down, allow two to three weeks, most of it spent waiting on insurance schedules, accounts and signatures.

Want it done for you?

We complete Constructionline Gold in full, including writing the policies the checklist requires, in your company name for your director's signature — £695. With a full gap report against the current checklist and every mandatory policy produced, £950. You pay Constructionline's own fee directly, so the account stays yours.

Constructionline and the Common Assessment Standard are trade marks of their respective owners. Accreditation Room is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any accreditation scheme.