Hi All, I am considering setting up on my own (initially part time alongside my existing job) offering general business administration and health and safety support to small businesses and tradesmen. I am Nebosh qualified and have over 12 years H&S experience under my belt. I also hold a level 4 qualification in business administration. I recently helped friends who run a facilities maintenance company set up a H&S system from scratch and gain Safe Contractor accreditation. I now support them with developing RAMS, Construction Phase Plans, etc which has helped them gain more clients. I really enjoyed doing this and It was a great learning curve for me! I am thinking of offering similar help as well as help with general admin tasks to other small businesses and trades, with a view to seeing if this is something I could make an income from. Does anyone have any advice or tips? Also I’d be keen to hear from small businesses/trades if this is something they think could be a useful service? Any feedback will be appreciated and thanks for reading!
It is a long time since I worked in construction but witnessed the transformation over a ten year period regarding the adoption of modern H&S standards, led mostly (in my humble opinion) by the introduction of CDM. Just a shame that standards of workmanship didn't follow? However, it's obvious that many one man and two man operations are still pretty much ignorant of H&S legislation and, in particular, their own responsibilities and liabilities when things go wrong. The same goes for contract admin in general. In theory, this gives you a great market to sell to but convincing these people they need your services is the difficult bit.
It's a great idea and there is without a doubt a huge demand for it. I know someone who runs a consultancy helping trades gain their safe contractor accreditation status and he does very well. My advice would be to draw up a list of target clients that you would want. Things like their trade, company size and turnover etc. Put together together some really compelling case studies about trades you have already helped and then get on the phone to your targeted trades and introduce yourself. Good luck with it all
Thank you so much for the positive responses! It’s making me think my idea to set up might be worth giving a go.
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