WorkSafe Contractor Prequal: Live, Not a Spreadsheet

The tender lands Friday. Same job. New prequal, new portal, new spreadsheet. Public liability. The SSSP. The training list. You sent this in March. Nobody can find March. The insurance that lapsed in June is still in a folder marked current.

Small firms walk away from that. One submitter told the minister they completed 76 prequalifications in a year. That’s their story, not a WorkSafe statistic.

On 20 August 2026 WorkSafe released a position statement and a free prequalification template so construction businesses, especially smaller contractors, can get onto jobs without a new pack every time. Prequal means checking a contractor’s health and safety practices before you hire them. It is not compulsory. It does not clear your duty to consult, cooperate, and coordinate with other PCBUs. Minister Brooke van Velden said she expects government procurement to reuse the template so agencies stop inventing their own. Read the Beehive release. This is not legal advice.

If you’re filling the pack

You’re the painter, the electrician, the three-person firm. The template is meant for you. Completing it once, in your own words, for the work you actually do, and keeping the evidence current, is the whole job. That’s what Assure Safe is for. They already write documentation that has to stand up to a principal’s prequal, and they stay with trades and other operational SMEs so the pack doesn’t rot between tenders. Next Friday you send the current record, not a rewrite.

If you’re asking for the pack

WorkSafe expects you to request the information before you hire. A formal prequal is one way. A conversation is fine if you actually get what you need. The detail has to match the size, complexity, and risk of the job.

Their starting questions are not a default checklist:

How they manage the risks from this work, and overlapping duties on a shared site.
How they talk about those risks with their workers and with other businesses.
How they keep plant and equipment safe, and how they plan high-risk work.
What experience and training the people turning up have for this job.
How they supervise their workers and monitor subcontractors.
How they investigate near-misses and accidents, and how they learn.

If the pack can’t answer those in site words, you have a logo and a date.

A spreadsheet dies when you email it. “Current” in March is still “current” in August. The answers need a home that can expire in public: insurance, SSSP, competency, verified, pending, or expired. That’s Contractor Management in Horizon. Suppliers submit against your requirements. You see who is good to engage before they arrive. Reminders go out before a lapsed cert walks on site. Next tender, you send the current record, not a new tab. That’s also what you show a principal, an insurer, or an inspector.

The register will faithfully show the wrong pack if you asked the wrong questions. A one-day villa rewire is not a civil job. That’s The Safety Lab with a New Zealand principal, and Eteva AU with an Australian one: they set pack depth to the work, write overlapping duties into the contract and the onboarding, and design the supervision that starts after someone is verified. Prequal does not do that last part for you.

This week

If you hire: read the position before you touch the template. Put the answers in Horizon. If you can’t tell a villa pack from a civil pack, that’s a Safety Lab or Eteva AU conversation.

If you tender: sit with Assure Safe, complete the WorkSafe template once, attach only current evidence. Send that record next Friday instead of retyping it. If government procurement picks up the same template, as the minister said she expects, you stop filling a different form for each agency.

WorkSafe wants you to ask before you hire. They don’t want a new novel every Friday. Assure Safe helps the small contractor keep one true pack. Horizon keeps it live. The Safety Lab and Eteva AU set the pack and finish the duties a prequal does not cover. Stop starting another spreadsheet.