FASET accreditation is the procurement signal that has come to define competence in safety netting. It tells a principal contractor that the contractor has been independently assessed against the trade body’s standards for safety netting installation. ISO 9001 certification adds a different layer — the documented quality management system that controls how the work is planned, executed, monitored, and improved across the organisation. Together, the two certifications give principal contractors a stronger procurement position than either provides on its own.
What FASET certifies
FASET is the trade association for safety netting, fall arrest, edge protection, and rope access. Its accreditation programme assesses contractors against industry standards covering training, equipment, installation methodology, and documentation. A FASET-accredited contractor has demonstrated that its operatives are trained to FASET standards, its equipment is compliant, and its installations follow recognised methodology.
On its own, FASET accreditation provides the trade-specific competence assurance that principal contractors look for at procurement stage. It is one of the cleaner differentiators between contractors who have invested in becoming credible in the trade and those who have not.
What ISO 9001 adds
ISO 9001 certification is a quality management standard that applies across all activities of an organisation. For Red Safety Netting, holding ISO 9001 alongside FASET means that the trade-specific competence FASET certifies sits inside a documented organisation-wide quality framework. The procedures, records, audits, and continual improvement processes that ISO 9001 requires apply to every aspect of the business, not just to the installation work.
This matters because trade competence on its own does not guarantee consistent delivery. A FASET-accredited contractor with weak quality management can produce inconsistent work even when individual installations are technically correct. The ISO 9001 framework provides the operational discipline that turns trade competence into consistent output across schemes, plots, and years.
How dual certification supports CDM 2015 duties
Under CDM 2015, the principal contractor must satisfy themselves that the contractors they appoint have the skills, knowledge, experience, and organisational capability to carry out the work safely. The four elements are not interchangeable. A contractor can have skilled operatives but weak organisational capability — and vice versa — and the principal contractor needs evidence of both.
FASET accreditation provides direct evidence of skills, knowledge, and experience for safety netting installation. ISO 9001 certification provides direct evidence of organisational capability — documented procedures, audit trails, non-conformance management, and continual improvement. The combination addresses all four CDM 2015 elements with documented, independent verification.
Documentation consistency
Across a fall protection package on a multi-phase housing development, the documentation produced by the contractor is what the principal contractor relies on to demonstrate compliance with regulatory duties. Inspection records, installation drawings, anchorage tests, post-incident reports — all of this needs to be produced consistently across the life of the project.
Red Safety Netting’s documentation is produced under the Globe Group’s ISO 9001 framework, which means the format, content, and retention of records is consistent across schemes. A principal contractor receiving documentation from Red Safety Netting on phase one of a development gets the same quality of documentation on phase five, regardless of which operatives are on site or which supervisors are managing the work. This consistency is what makes the documentation usable for the principal contractor’s compliance position rather than just informationally available.
Subcontractor and supply chain control
ISO 9001 requires documented control over subcontractor and supply chain activities. For fall protection work specifically, this means that any subcontracted resource is brought into the same procedural framework as directly employed operatives. Competence is verified, briefings are documented, supervision is structured, and the quality of work is held to the same standard regardless of employment relationship.
This is particularly relevant where Red Safety Netting is delivering large national projects across multiple sites, which is part of the business’s standard operating profile given the national footprint. The ability to maintain consistent standards across geographically dispersed sites and varied workforces is what ISO 9001 certification supports operationally.
Cross-divisional quality alignment
Within the Globe Group, ISO 9001 certification applies across all four operating divisions — Globe Civil Engineering, Globe Cambridge, Globe Roofing, and Red Safety Netting. On commercial developments where Red Safety Netting is providing fall protection alongside Globe Cambridge’s scaffold, the documentation produced by all four divisions follows the same quality framework. For principal contractors managing multiple Globe Group packages on the same scheme, this alignment reduces administrative overhead and produces a consistent compliance position across the packages.
Continual improvement
ISO 9001 requires evidence of continual improvement through monitoring, internal audit, and management review. For a fall protection contractor, this means lessons learned from one installation feed into the procedures for subsequent installations. Near misses, non-conformances, and improvement opportunities are captured systematically rather than addressed informally and forgotten.
Across a portfolio of installations, this produces a contractor whose practices improve over time in a way that can be evidenced. For principal contractors making repeat appointments, this is a meaningful quality assurance — the contractor’s standard does not stagnate.
Talk to Red Safety Netting
To discuss fall protection procurement on your forthcoming project, contact Red Safety Netting on 01223 890727 or email enquiries@theglobegroup.co.uk.
