Subcontractor PQQ Questions for Construction: What to Ask, How to Score It, and What to Check Before the First Day on Site

A subcontractor pre-qualification questionnaire has one purpose: to find out, before any money changes hands, whether the company you are about to put on site is competent, insured, solvent, lawful and able to do the work. Most PQQs in circulation do not do that. They ask for a copy of the health and safety policy and a list of insurances, file the answers, and the first anyone learns of the problem is when the policy lapses or the labour turns out to be somebody else's. This article sets out the questions a subcontractor PQQ should ask, the ones that are pass or fail, how to score the rest so that the decision can be defended, and the checks that follow approval.

Why the duty is yours

CDM 2015 regulation 8 requires anyone appointing a designer or contractor to take reasonable steps to satisfy themselves that the appointee has the skills, knowledge, experience and, for an organisation, the organisational capability to do the work safely. Regulation 15 requires a contractor not to employ or appoint anyone without the necessary skills, knowledge, training and experience. A main contractor appointing a subcontractor is doing both. The PQQ is the record that the reasonable steps were taken, and a questionnaire that was never scored is not evidence that anything was assessed.

The commercial reason is the same one clients apply upstream. The Common Assessment Standard, owned by Build UK, is the industry-agreed question set that clients and Tier 1 contractors use to pre-qualify their supply chain through seven recognised assessment bodies. A main contractor that has answered it for its own clients knows exactly what a good answer looks like and should expect the same from below. Where a subcontractor holds a current Common Assessment Standard certificate, the PQQ can accept it for the areas it covers and concentrate on what it does not: the specific competence for this package, the resources for this programme, and the checks that a certificate cannot give.

The questions, by area

Structure the PQQ on the assessment areas the Common Assessment Standard uses, because subcontractors recognise them and the answers can be reused. Under each, ask for evidence, not assurance.

Identity and organisation

Registered name and number, trading names, registered office, directors, ultimate parent, years trading, number of directly employed staff and operatives, and the trades the company carries out with its own labour as against those it subcontracts. The last question matters more than any other on the page: a subcontractor who sublets the work is a layer of margin between you and the people doing it, and their PQQ has to reach the next tier.

Financial standing

Turnover for the last three years, the last filed accounts, whether the company has been subject to any insolvency proceedings, and the value of the largest contract undertaken. A package worth half the company's annual turnover is a risk to both parties.

Insurance

Employers' liability, public liability, professional indemnity where the package carries design, and contractors' all risks or plant cover where relevant: insurer, policy number, limit of indemnity, expiry date, and a copy of the certificate. Employers' liability is a statutory requirement for any employer and the certificate is the simplest thing on the form to check.

Health and safety

The policy, who provides competent advice under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 regulation 7, SSIP or Common Assessment Standard certification, RIDDOR reportable incidents and enforcement action in the last three years with the details, how RAMS are produced and by whom, how the workforce is trained and briefed, and the arrangements for the specific hazards of this package.

Environmental

Policy, waste carrier registration where the subcontractor removes its own waste, how waste is segregated and documented, and any environmental prosecutions or enforcement notices.

Quality

Whether a quality management system is held, certified or not, how work is inspected and recorded, whether inspection and test plans are used, how nonconformities are dealt with, and a sample record. A subcontractor who can produce a completed check sheet from a recent job has answered the question; one who sends the certificate has not.

Competence and training

The scheme cards held by the supervisors and operatives who will be on this site, by name: CSCS, CPCS or NPORS for plant, ECS for electrical, SKILLcard, CISRS for scaffold, IPAF and PASMA for access, Gas Safe, NICEIC or NAPIT registration, SSSTS or SMSTS for supervisors, first aid, asbestos awareness, face-fit, confined space and temporary works training as the package requires. Ask for the register, not the assurance that everyone is carded.

Supply chain, modern slavery and employment status

How the subcontractor selects and controls its own subcontractors and labour agencies; whether it publishes a modern slavery statement under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which applies to commercial organisations with turnover of £36 million or more; how it checks right to work; and whether its labour is directly employed, self-employed under the Construction Industry Scheme or supplied by an agency. The answers determine which tax and employment regimes apply and who carries the risk if they are applied wrongly.

Information security, anti-bribery, equality

Short sections, but the public-sector client upstream will have asked them of you, and a subcontractor handling drawings on a shared platform needs to answer the first one properly.

Building safety

For packages on buildings in scope of the Building Safety Act 2022, and for any package that affects fire safety: the subcontractor's understanding of the dutyholder regime under Part 2A of the Building Regulations 2010, its competence for the work, and how it will support change control and mandatory occurrence reporting.

Experience and references

Three comparable projects in the last five years with client contacts, and permission to approach them. Then approach them.

Pass or fail, and the rest scored

A PQQ that produces a single overall mark hides the fact that some questions have only one acceptable answer. Separate the gates from the criteria:

• Gates, each pass or fail, and any failure ends the assessment: employers' liability insurance current and at the required limit; public liability current and at the required limit; no undisclosed insolvency; competent health and safety advice in place; no unresolved enforcement action relevant to the package; right-to-work checking process in place; and, where the package requires it, the statutory registration such as Gas Safe or a waste carrier licence.
• Weighted criteria, each scored 0 to 5 against a written scale, with a weight that reflects the package: health and safety management, quality management, competence of the named team, relevant experience, financial capacity relative to the package value, environmental management, supply chain control, resources and programme, information management, and the reference outcomes. The weighted percentage gives a rank; a threshold gives an outcome of approve, approve with conditions, or decline.

Write the scale down before scoring: what a 5 looks like, what a 0 looks like. Score three tenderers side by side on the same sheet. Record who scored and when. That sheet is what you produce when the declined subcontractor asks why, and when the client's auditor asks how the supply chain was selected.

What approval does not do

A PQQ approved in March is not evidence of anything in September. Three sets of checks follow it.

1. Expiry tracking. Every insurance, certification, registration and statement on the PQQ has a date, and the register that holds them should calculate the next expiry, the days remaining and a status, and warn at 60 days. A subcontractor whose public liability lapsed on site is uninsured on your site.
2. Onboarding and pre-start. The RAMS reviewed against a written checklist before acceptance; the pre-start meeting held and minuted with the programme, interfaces, hold points and welfare agreed; the competence of the named people verified card by card, not assumed from the PQQ; the right to work confirmed for each person given site access; and the employment status assessed where labour is self-employed, using HMRC's check employment status for tax tool where there is doubt, because the penalties for getting it wrong fall on the party that got it wrong. A civil penalty for employing an illegal worker can reach £60,000 per worker.
3. Monitoring. A weekly record of labour against plan, progress, quality and safety observations, and issues, with an improvement notice process that escalates in stages and a monthly scorecard that feeds the annual panel review. The PQQ answered the question "should we appoint them"; the scorecard answers "should we appoint them again", and a panel that is never reviewed is a list of everyone who was ever approved.

The mirror image: answering the PQQ you are sent

Everything above applies in reverse when a main contractor or client sends you their questionnaire. The areas are the same, the evidence expected is the same, and the answer that scores is the one that names the document and attaches it: not "we have a quality management system" but "our quality management system is documented in procedures PR-001 to PR-021; inspection and test plans are produced under PR-014 and a completed example is attached". A library of model answers under each Common Assessment Standard area, each with an evidence table, turns a fortnight of drafting into a day of editing, and it forces the company to have the documents the answers cite.