In regards to Kier, we have a good relationship with the local office and undertake a lot of work on their behalf, we were recently invited to attend an Induction Day for Scaffolding Contractors in Newcastle (Very last minute may I add, especially bearing in mind we are situated not two minutes drive from the Sheffield office!!) which we duly did and as far as I'm aware they prefer NASC Members but will accept Non Members following an Audit which as far as we are concerned is fair enough, at last a Principal Contractor with a bit of common sense and who has not fallen for the NASC schpeel.
As for as my own personnel views and many others may I add regarding the NASC I would comment as follows:
1) House Keeping
They need to get their own house in order before they start pitching their Members as the Crème De La Crème of Scaffolding Contractors, far too many times we have seen, heard or witnessed very poor and sub standard work from their Members, I personally have numerous photographs of such events, some very recently too.
2) Audit Procedure
I have heard things are changing but the Audit procedure is still very wrong, how can you be expected to feel you have had a completely unbiased Audit when the people undertaking the task are from your region, when we were being Audited we found we even shared a customer with the Auditor!! I'm not talking about some national builder, just a regional concern, In my view just wrong...The NASC are a National Organisation, why can't they have an Auditor from a different region perform the task? i.e. if a business from Newcastle upon Tyne applies, why can’t a London Auditor perform the task? They bloody charge enough!! For me it just takes away any suggestion of bias or perceived self interest.
3) The Double Standards of the Organisation.
We have applied and been failed twice, the first time it was definitely political, in fact I have been told so by a prominent local NASC Representative but obviously they are not prepared to go on record, apparently it was on the word of a local competitor who basically black balled us at the regional meeting and has done so to a number of Sheffield Applicants, however I have no proof of this so can't state it as a point of fact....However, it would be interesting to see the Stats on how many South Yorkshire Companies have applied and been accepted, I definetly know of 6 Companies that applied within the last 4 years and only 1 has gained membership this being about a year ago….I’d like to see a comparison with other regions, regions who haven’t got such vocal and photographic competitors!! Anyway…Back to our case… Apparently because we caused such a stink things were changed, they now give you a report following the Audit, but can you believe they never gave us an excuse for initially failing? They just sent the paper work back with a covering letter say basically "Sorry you’re not in" Oh...and kept the Audit fee by the way!! It was only when they were pushed did they produce a few pictures of our so called sub standard work sent in by a local competitor which was grey to say the least, but fair enough, if that’s the bench mark, so be it. So....when we in turn sent pictures of this competitors work back to them containing a Catalogue of fundamental errors (And other NASC Members in the region may I add)...What do you think happened?? Nothing...They (And the other Members with sub standard work) are still members of the organisation even though the NASC deem the faults to be such poor workmanship that it would definitely deny membership of an applying company. Then there are the cases where they don’t follow their own mandate, recently a local member went into Liquidation, basically went bust, they then re-booted the business in a different name and kept their membership, it clearly states as a condition of membership you must be trading as a company for 2 years…I will not take any credit for the last point as this was brought to light by someone else, however, another example.
Any way you cut it that’s complete double standards.
I challenge any Representative from the NASC to tell me differently, I don’t want to here about what the Organisation is doing for the Industry (Admittedly mostly good stuff) or be bogged down in flim flam of the NASC this the NASC that, I want you to come out here and deny the above….Tell me it didn’t happen……Because if you dig…you will find that it did, and in my view the NASC is far from the Crème De La Crème and should stop selling themselves as such until such a time that it actually has the respect and credence from the vast majority of the very industry it purports to represent.