if i want to go out for a meal i aks if anyone knows of a good resturant, if i need a competent fire risk assessor i would enquire with other businesse who did their and would they recommend them.
I dont disagree Chariot, the only thing I would say is that there are certain things you can go by recommendation on (such a nice restaurant or a decent mechanic) but I'm not sure if you can when it comes risk assessments /assessors.
You need to be sure the person making the recommendation knows that the assessor and the work that the assessor produces is pukka, bearing in mind how technical risk assessments can be. Does the person making the recommendation understand that?
It can be the usual story of an RP being handed a 100 page risk assessment which has been filled with utter drivel and waffle just to pad it out.
The hapless RP assumes that just because its has lots of pages it "must be good" and "worth all that cash s/he forked out" and "that they dont need to do anything else now - they are all compliaint because an assessor has been in "
That RP then says to you "I can recommend my risk assessor he was really good and thorough"