If you've been on Avetta for a while and recently received an invitation from a new hiring client — Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BHP, Newmont, or any of the larger Avetta clients — you may have noticed that the compliance items in your account suddenly grew. New training requirements appeared. The insurance limits changed. A country-specific endorsement showed up. Your grade dropped from green to yellow even though nothing about your company changed. Welcome to Avetta Connect: the client-configurable layer that sits on top of standard Avetta membership and turns compliance into a per-client conversation.
This guide explains what Avetta Connect is, how it differs from baseline Avetta membership, how clients configure their overlays, how the grade calculation works per client, the surprises that catch contractors off guard, and what to do the moment a Connect invite lands in your inbox.
The Two Layers: Standard Avetta vs. Avetta Connect
Avetta is structured as a marketplace with two layers that contractors regularly conflate.
Standard Avetta Membership
This is your subscription tier — the price you pay annually based on company size and number of connected clients. Standard membership gives you:
- An Avetta account where you complete the baseline questionnaires (insurance, safety statistics, basic written programs).
- Document storage for COIs, EMR letters, OSHA logs, safety programs.
- The Avetta Marketplace where contractors are visible to potential hiring clients searching by service category and geography.
- A baseline grade derived from your company's safety statistics and document completeness.
Standard membership alone, however, does not connect you to a specific hiring client's compliance requirements. That is what Connect does.
Avetta Connect (Client-Configurable Overlay)
Avetta Connect is the platform layer that allows each hiring client to configure their own requirements — insurance limits, training stack, country-specific rules, document expirations, scoring weights, custom questionnaires, geofenced training requirements — and apply them to every contractor connected to that client's portal. Think of standard Avetta as the textbook and Connect as each professor's syllabus.
Two contractors with identical companies and identical Avetta subscription tiers will have different compliance lists if they are connected to different clients. A contractor connected to a U.S. midstream operator may need OSHA-aligned programs and a $5M umbrella. The same contractor connected to a Canadian operator may also need Alberta OHS compliance documentation, French-language training records for Quebec sites, and a different insurance cert format.
How Connect Configurability Actually Works
Baseline Avetta core Industry Pack template Client Overlay Country Rules Final Scorecard Per clientHiring client administrators in Avetta Connect have a configuration console where they choose which requirement modules to enable for their contractors. The typical configuration dimensions:
Insurance Limits and Endorsements
Clients set minimum policy limits per coverage line — General Liability, Auto, Workers' Compensation, Umbrella, Pollution, Professional, and others depending on scope. They also specify required endorsements: additional insured (CG 20 10 + CG 20 37 or equivalent), waiver of subrogation, primary and non-contributory, and notice-of-cancellation language. They can require an A.M. Best rating (commonly A- VII or better) and they can require the COI to name specific insureds (parent + named subsidiaries). For the difference between the additional insured forms, see CG 20 10 vs CG 20 37.
Training Stack
Clients configure required courses by job category. Common stacks: OSHA 10 or OSHA 30, HAZWOPER 24 or 40 hour, H2S Clear, PEC SafeLand, PEC SafeGulf, BasicPlus from VeriForce, Confined Space Entry, Fall Protection, First Aid/CPR/AED. Some clients require Avetta's own training catalog; others accept third-party records but only if uploaded with a specific format and trainer credential evidence.
Country-Specific Rules
This is one of the biggest sources of confusion. A multinational hiring client running operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., Chile, and Saudi Arabia will configure different requirement subsets per country: Canadian provincial WSIB / WCB clearance letters, Australian Safe Work Method Statements, U.K. CDM 2015 documentation, Chilean Mutual de Seguridad affiliation, ISO 45001 certificates in some EU jurisdictions. If your work touches any non-U.S. site, expect country-specific layers to appear automatically the moment you indicate you operate there.
Document Expirations and Renewal Cadences
Clients configure how often each document refreshes. Insurance certs typically renew at policy expiration. Some clients require a fresh COI every 12 months even if the policy spans longer. EMR letters update annually with each new rating year. Training certs refresh per the training body's requirement (often annual for refreshers, three-year for some certifications). Avetta will flip your status to non-compliant the day a required document expires.
Scoring Weights
Clients set how heavily each compliance domain counts toward your overall grade for that client. One client might weight safety statistics 40%, written programs 30%, training 20%, insurance 10%. Another might invert it. Two clients can give the same contractor different grades from the same underlying data because their weights differ.
Custom Questionnaires
Clients can add custom questions specific to their operations: site access protocols, environmental compliance attestations, ESG/sustainability disclosures, modern slavery statements, conflict minerals declarations, cybersecurity self-assessments. These appear in your Avetta account as additional sections that must be completed for that client.
Subscription Tier vs. Connect Overlay: Where the Cost Comes From
Your Avetta annual subscription is determined by your tier — number of employees and number of connected clients. That is the bill from Avetta. Connect overlays do not directly increase the subscription, but they materially increase the compliance work, and indirectly the cost: training courses purchased through the Avetta marketplace, additional insurance riders, country-specific certifications, third-party audits, and labor hours uploading and maintaining the documents.
Contractors evaluating Avetta against ISNetworld often compare just the subscription numbers and miss the overlay cost. The honest comparison is total compliance load, which depends entirely on which clients are on the platform. See Veriforce vs ISNetworld and the BROWZ portal overview for adjacent platform context.
How Grade Calculation Works Per Client
Avetta produces a per-client grade — typically expressed as a green / yellow / red status, sometimes with a numerical score. The math:
- Domain completeness: each domain (insurance, safety stats, written programs, training, custom questionnaires) is scored against required items. Each required item gets a binary present-and-current or not.
- Domain quality: where applicable, items are scored on quality. Safety programs reviewed by Avetta receive pass/fail per topic. Statistics are compared to client thresholds.
- Weighted aggregate: the client's configured weights apply to produce a per-client score.
- Status mapping: the score maps to green / yellow / red per the client's thresholds.
The same underlying data can produce different grades on different client portals. If you're puzzled why a Shell scorecard says green and a Chevron scorecard says yellow when nothing changed at your company, the answer is almost always weight differences, country overlays, or a single document flagged as expired against one client's 12-month cycle but acceptable to another's policy-length cycle.
Common Surprises That Catch Contractors Off Guard
| Surprise | What Happened | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Geofenced training | Client requires PEC SafeGulf for Gulf of Mexico work but PEC SafeLand for onshore — and you only have one | Buy the second course; both are issued by Veriforce |
| Country-specific COI | Canadian client requires the COI to be on an ACORD 25 with provincial WCB clearance attached | Pull WCB clearance letter, attach to COI |
| French-language records | Quebec site requires training records and JHAs in French | Translate or use a bilingual provider |
| ISO 45001 expectation | EU client overlay assumes ISO 45001 certification | Either certify or document equivalent OHSAS-style program |
| Modern slavery statement | Australian or U.K. client requires a published statement | Publish the statement on your website, attach link to Avetta |
| Mid-year insurance bump | Client raised umbrella minimum from $5M to $10M mid-cycle | Endorsement from carrier, upload to Avetta |
| Tier change on connection | New client connection bumps you to a higher Avetta subscription tier | Plan for tier cost in your bid |
| Sub-tier flowdown | Client requires your subs also be on Avetta | Push your subs to register; see subcontractor management program |
What to Do the Moment You Get an Avetta Connect Invitation
The invitation usually arrives by email from Avetta on behalf of the hiring client, with a deadline measured in days or low weeks. The mistake is to click accept and start filling in fields without reading the full overlay first. Do this instead:
- Accept the invitation but do not yet pay tier upgrades. Acceptance lets you see the configured requirements; payment commits you.
- Export the full requirement list from the client's overlay. Avetta provides a checklist view; print it.
- Compare to your current Avetta state. Mark each item as already-on-file, partially-on-file, or missing.
- Estimate cost and time to close gaps. Insurance riders, training course purchases, document creation, country-specific certifications.
- Decide whether the bid value justifies the compliance investment. For a single small project from a multinational, the answer is sometimes no.
- If yes, sequence the work: insurance and EMR first (longest carrier lead times), then training (course completion + grading lag), then document uploads, then any custom questionnaires.
- Set Avetta document-expiry alerts per requirement. Renewals will start hitting in 12 months; you don't want to lose green status the day after you achieved it.
For contractors comparing the audit experience to ISN, our ISN audit prep guide and the mock audit checklist share patterns you can apply to Avetta as well, even though the platforms differ in reviewer culture.
The Avetta Marketplace and Connect Together
One useful side effect of Connect: clients shopping for new contractors typically search the Avetta Marketplace filtered by service category, geography, and Connect compliance status. Contractors green on Connect for a major client are visible to similar clients searching for similar work. The Marketplace plus Connect functions as a discovery engine — not a primary lead source for most contractors, but a meaningful tailwind for those who keep their accounts in good standing across multiple clients.
Operating Practice: Treat Each Client as a Mini-Account
Veteran Avetta contractors maintain a per-client compliance file: a one-page summary per connected client listing the specific overlay items, the document version on file for each, the expiry date, and the next renewal action. When a new invite lands you copy the template and fill it in. When a hiring client audits, you produce the page and the documents in minutes. When something expires, the calendar pings you weeks ahead.
That discipline is what separates contractors who casually mention they are "on Avetta" from contractors whose hiring clients give repeat business because compliance is never the friction point.
PrequalPilot tracks per-client overlay requirements, document expirations, and grade impact across Avetta Connect, ISNetworld, and the other major prequalification platforms in one dashboard. See pricing.