Remember Quality Mark, the scheme designed to give consumers a safe pool of builders to choose from, based on strict pre-qualification? Five years and £10m pounds after it was launched, it is officially dead, having got only around 500 firms to sign up.

But wait. Out of the ashes comes a revamped scheme from the DTI called TrustMark. It’s still designed to protect the public, it looks more palatable to the industry, and it’s being run by the CIOB.

TrustMark is different in key ways from its predecessor. For one, if you want to be registered, you don’t have to pay a hefty sum to insure yourself for the required six-year warranty that Quality Mark promised. Now, customers can choose the warranty or not, and they pay for it.

Another key difference is that TrustMark will embrace existing competence schemes already run by trade associations – if they meet certain standards. This is more relaxed than Quality Mark’s conditions of entry, which included full-day premise inspections and a root round in a company’s finances. This should encourage buy-in, and lead to the all-important critical mass.

The CIOB bid for the position of secretariat to TrustMark, and won. But is it really the kind of thing CIOB staff should be doing? Fair comment, but yes, said Barry Neilson, the CIOB’s regional director in Scotland, and one of those leading the bid.

“It’s what the CIOB is all about,” he said. “Advancement of building for the public benefit. It fits neatly.”

He added it would also raise the profile of the CIOB among consumers, albeit indirectly.

The scheme will be launched to the public next month. It’s too early to tell how many firms have signed up, but Neilson says 24 principle trade associations have voiced support, a thing they never did for Quality Mark.

“Quality Mark was a Rolls Royce of a scheme, excellent but too stringent and too costly to implement,” Neilson said.

Source

Construction Manager