Tōtika Scoring – pass or fail?
Tōtika is now into its 3rd year and already has over 3,000 businesses signed up. By comparison, the WSMP scheme had circa 3,250 after 16 years before it was terminated by ACC.
The difference between the WSMP and Tōtika is that the former didn’t have a great deal of competition in the prequal space. Tōtika was created to simplify the prequal space after all!
Tōtika by design, is not a pass / fail type of scheme. Rather, it is designed to assess and grade suppliers' health and safety competency, but it does not dictate a specific threshold for acceptance.
What we have seen over the last 6 months especially is that ‘buying’ businesses (i.e. Tier 1 Contractors, Government Agencies, Councils) are applying their own threshold / minimal level. Some as low as 60% and others as high as 85-95%.
Although we understand the desire to have a % scoring system, Tōtika was not designed for that purpose. As a result, we are now ending up with a disconnect between what the framework was designed for and how it is being used.
For those who remember, the WSMP evolved the same way. That too, was never designed as a pass / fail scheme. In fact, it was never designed as a prequal scheme. It was industry that turned it into one.
It is not necessarily a bad thing to have a % scoring scheme if the scheme was designed for that.
We see a few challenges with how it is currently evolving.
Scoring: if industry want to use a scoring system, then a scheme should be based on a scoring framework. This would mean that 100% is achievable and how that can be achieved. Not unlike Sitewise. Tōtika does not allow for that and instead uses a 'does not meet standard'; 'meet standard'; or ‘exceeds standard’. If one doesn’t meet standard consistently then the firm will sit under a Developing Status and if it does, it sits under a Performing Status.
Incidentally the WSMP has a similar approach where it was either a pass / fail for its three categories of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. You either achieved one of those three levels or you did not. No % scoring was used or needed.
Standardisation of Prequalification Providers / Schemes: this was one of the objectives of Tōtika when it was created. Now that industry is evolving Tōtika into a scoring scheme with varying levels of score acceptance, we are finding a new disconnect around the inconsistency of how it is applied. It does little for industry alignment to have one contractor set the benchmark at 60% and the next, in the same industry at 85%.
ISO, SafePlus, Q Safe and other 3rd Party Accreditation Scoring: where otherwise stated, 3rd party schemes will automatically achieve the following for either all or selected categories: ‘performing – assessed and fully meeting the requirements of the core criteria – score 100%’.