Department of Conservation

DOC - Health and Safety Prequalification Requirement

The Department is committed to continuously improving health and safety in our workplaces and ensuring the safety of all workers including contractors.

To achieve this all contractors who do high risk work will require a current Health and Safety (H&S) prequalification completed by an independent third-party provider by the 31st of March 2024.

If you only undertake low risk work (for the most part office related) or supply goods or equipment to the Department, or provide the service on your own premises, this will not apply to you.

If you hold a pre-existing contract with the Department, including panel membership (e.g. helicopter, track and wild animal ground control) that does not expire or come up for renewal until after 31 March 2024, the external prequalification requirement will be applied if/when the contract is renewed.

H&S prequalification offers significant advantages for you as a contractor by reducing the burden of repeatedly submitting extensive health and safety documentation when you tender or are engaged for work with DOC and other clients.

DOC’s preferred supplier to assess an organisation's health and safety prequalification status is specialist health and safety consultancy, PREQUAL NZ. However, we will also accept prequalifications from other suppliers if deemed to be at an equivalent level. If you hold a prequalification with a supplier other than PREQUAL, please complete this simple form https://forms.office.com/r/ArCEJ41b5X to initiate the evaluation process to determine this.

If your organization is already registered with PREQUAL, you do not need to take any action. PREQUAL will provide instructions on how to link your existing prequalification information to the Department.

If you are not currently registered with PREQUAL you will need to register and either upload your existing H&S prequalification or undertake an assessment to achieve this.

To ensure that this important work is completed before 31 March 2024, we encourage you to start as soon as possible by contacting PREQUAL on info@prequal.co.nz or 0800 773 782 who can assist you with the process.

Please note, if you have not already been through the prequalification assessment process, you will be responsible for covering the cost associated with the assessment. This cost is tiered appropriately according to the size of your operation.