A SafePlus onsite assessment for a mid-sized organisation (approx. 50 to a few hundred staff) is likely to take about five-eight assessor-days to complete. This estimate includes pre-assessment planning, time on site, report development, and presentation of results. Simple assessments for smaller businesses have been completed in three days, while those for larger and more complex organisations have taken several weeks. The intent and process of a SafePlus onsite assessment, coupled with individual client requirements, mean there are no fixed timing (or pricing) rules.

The main variable in the time (and cost) of an assessment is the number of people covered by interviews and conversations. Assessors will work with their client organisations to judge the right number of people to talk with, based on client-specific factors including:

• size of the organisation (or the parts within your agreed scope)
• risks to be assessed
• number of levels of management and supervision within the organisation
• number of locations, shifts and/or teams to be sampled
• the degree of consistency of information they find from documents and their conversations and observations. Inconsistent feedback may need additional interviews to explore.

Anticipate discussions with about 20% of staff in a mid-sized organisation, via one-to-one and group interviews. More than 20% coverage is likely for organisations with fewer than 50 people, while a smaller proportion is likely for organisations with several hundred or more staff. Individual interviews take about 30-45 minutes each.

Other factors that have influenced assessors’ time needed (or duration) for assessments are:

• whether the lead assessor needs to engage a subject specialist for one or more of the risks to be assessed
• the extent of support the client wants in both preparing for the assessment, and presenting the results. For example, whether presentations to board, management and staff meetings are requested of the assessor.
• the number of SafePlus accredited assessors involved. (We recommend at least two accredited assessors in most situations.) While sharing the work between two or more assessors doesn’t impact total assessor time on site, it will affect the assessment’s duration and may affect assessor costs
• whether the assessment scope needs to be revisited after the assessment has started, for example, a risk that wasn’t considered important initially may be identified during interviews as a key issue to include
• the extent of client feedback to the assessment report that the assessor needs to respond to.