The contractor prequalification packet

A contractor prequalification packet is the file a hiring client (the oil company you work for) asks for before they will let you on their lease: your injury numbers, your insurance, your written programs, and proof that the people showing up are trained. Most companies in the basin submit theirs through ISNetworld or a similar network. This page is what goes in it, in the order a coordinator looks at it, and the four mismatches that cost a grade. The coordinator is the person who reviews your packet and scores it, either at the network or at the hiring client.

One thing to say plainly up front: each network publishes its own current requirement list on its own site, and those lists change. This page is not a substitute for the one your hiring client sent you. It is what I get asked for over and over, which is a different and more useful thing than a specification.

What goes in the packet

• Your EMR letterOn the carrier's letterhead, naming the rating year. Not a screenshot and not your own spreadsheet. Ask your agent for it in January, because it takes longer to arrive than you expect.
• Three years of OSHA 300A summariesThe signed annual summary, one per calendar year, with hours worked and the case counts. These are the documents everything else on this page gets compared against.
• Your TRIR and DART for each of those yearsCalculated from the same 300A you are attaching, not from memory. The calculator does it.
• Written programs for the work you actually doNot a binder of every program in existence. The ones covering the hazards on the scope you are bidding, each one naming a real current person as the responsible party, each one with a review date.
• Training records with datesPer person, with the completion date and the expiry where the training expires. The coordinator is checking whether the people on the roster you submitted are current today, not whether the company has ever run the training.
• Certificates of insuranceGeneral liability, auto, workers compensation, umbrella, with the limits and the additional-insured and waiver-of-subrogation endorsements the contract asks for. The certificate has to be in date on the day it is reviewed, which is not the day you uploaded it.
• A written answer to every question on their formA blank answer can pull a grade down. If a question does not apply, write "N/A" and one line saying why rather than leaving it empty, and follow the hiring client’s own instructions for that form.

The four mismatches that cost a grade

A missing document costs points, and so do two documents from the same company that disagree. A coordinator does not have to argue with you about a mismatch. They just score it.

1. The TRIR on the form does not match the 300A attached to it

Somebody fills the form in from memory in March and attaches the summary that was posted in February. Now there are two numbers for the same year in the same submission. Calculate from the 300A, every time, and check the case count as well as the rate.

2. A program names somebody who left

The responsible person on your written program moved on last year. It is a small thing and it reads as a program nobody has opened since it was written, which is exactly what a coordinator is trying to find out.

3. Training that expired between the upload and the review

You submitted in October with everything current. The review happens in January and three certifications lapsed in November. The submission was accurate when you sent it and it is wrong now, and the grade is set on the second date, not the first.

4. The roster and the site do not agree

The people on the packet are not the people who show up. Sometimes that is a legitimate crew change, but then the hiring client has questions on site instead of on paper. If the crew changes, update the roster before they arrive.

What actually fixes this

All four come from the same thing: the information lives in more than one place and the copies drift. The EMR letter is in an email, the 300A is in a filing cabinet, the training dates are on a spreadsheet somebody keeps on their own laptop, and the certificates are with the agent. Nobody is careless. There is just no single place where all of it is current at once, so assembling the packet means copying figures between four sources, and copying is where the mismatches come from.

What helps is one current set of records, where a training date is entered once and every document that needs it reads the same row. Build the packet from that.

Before you submit

Five minutes, in this order. Open the 300A for each year and read the case count and the hours off it. Recalculate the rates from those figures. Open every certificate and every training record and check the expiry against next month, not today. Read the responsible-party name on each program out loud. Then submit.

One thing worth getting right earlier

Everything on this page rests on the 300A being right, and the 300A rests on each case having been called correctly at the time. A case recorded that should not have been raises your rate for three years of submissions. The free recordability checker walks that decision question by question and cites the paragraph behind every answer.