ISNetworld grades and what an A actually means

An ISNetworld grade is issued per hiring client, against criteria that client configured, so one account carries a different letter with each client. PG&E Utility Standard SAFE-3006S, published August 20, 2026, requires contractors performing medium-risk or high-risk work to achieve and maintain an ISN grade of A or B. Vegetation management sits in PG&E's high-risk row.

"ISN certified, grade A" on a capability statement leaves an evaluator with a search box and no client to search for. A grade in ISNetworld is not a property of the contractor. It is a property of one relationship, between one contractor and one hiring client, scored against criteria that client configured. This page sets out how the letter is assembled, using the documents PG&E and one manufacturer have published, and the limit ISN itself sets on what the letter decides.

A grade belongs to one hiring client at a time

ISN describes the platform as collecting requirements that each client sets for itself. In its own words, "Hiring Client requirements can be configured by location, level of risk, or specific designations and best practices shared by the ISN team." Submitted documents are then reviewed by ISN's Review and Verification Services team "against regulatory and Hiring Client requirements."

The plural shows up in ISN's own writing. Announcing a redesigned Scorecard on October 23, 2025, ISN quoted a contractor customer describing it as a way to "monitor Hiring Client grades." The same release describes ISN as connecting 850 hiring clients with 85,000 active contractors and suppliers.

One account, one set of uploads, many letters. The statement a buyer can check names the client and the standard behind it.

PG&E's requirement is one sentence in SAFE-3006S

On August 20, 2026, PG&E published Utility Standard SAFE-3006S, "Contractor Safety Requirements for Work Performed on Behalf of PG&E," at Rev 0. Section 2.2 carries the grade requirement:

Contractors performing medium-risk work or high-risk work must: a. Complete the ISNetWorld (ISN) prequalification (see definition) process for PG&E. b. Achieve and maintain an ISN grade of A or B.

Two words in that sentence do the procurement work: and maintain. The grade is a condition of continuing, not a hurdle cleared at award.

The standard binds further down the chain than the signature page. It defines Contractor as "the Prime Contractor and Subcontractors at any tier performing Work that is subject to SAFE-3001S requirements." Section 2.2 also requires each contractor to "Carry an ISN identification badge or have access to an electronic ID AND present it to PG&E upon request," which is the version of the grade that shows up at a job site gate.

Vegetation management sits in the high-risk row

Whether the grade requirement reaches a given crew depends on the risk classification, and PG&E publishes the table that sets it. SAFE-3001S Attachment 2, the Enterprise Contractor Safety Matrix, Rev 2, published June 20, 2024, lists under High Risk:

Vegetation Management (including utility tree trimming, clearance work, and chipping)

The High Risk row's own caption states the consequence: "Required to be ISN registered, connected to PG&E and qualified with an A or B grade. A Programmatic Safety Plan or Project (Site) Specific Safety Plan is required for all High-Risk work."

The matrix draws its nearest boundary at the tool. Low Risk holds "Basic Landscaping services including standard lawn mowing, trimming, and pruning with hand tools," followed by an explicit carve-out for trenching, vegetation management work, fall hazards and heavy equipment. A pole saw and a truck are on opposite sides of that line.

Herbicide work moves on a narrower fact. Application "performed according to manufacturer's recommendations/directions" is Low Risk. Application not performed according to those directions is Medium Risk, and the revision notes record that scope moving down from High Risk on May 23, 2024. Same applicator, same tank, same right of way. The label decides the risk tier, and the risk tier decides whether a grade is required at all.

The highest-risk task on the contract sets the classification

Section 2.3 of SAFE-3006S:

The assigned risk classification is based on the highest-risk work performed under the contract, including work performed by subcontractors.

Subcontracting the climbing on a contract of inspections and reporting leaves the whole contract classified high. One high-risk task pulls it up, and the A-or-B requirement follows down every tier. PG&E's Contractor Safety Program Contract Requirements, Revision 5, effective March 28, 2024, make the prime hold that gate at section 3.3:

Contractor shall not allow any Subcontractor to start any Work for which Pre-qualification is required without first obtaining written approval from PG&E that the Subcontractor has satisfied PG&E's Pre-qualification requirements.

The approval is PG&E's and it is in writing. For how that obligation travels through the subcontract, see flow-down clauses.

What the letter is made of, on the one scorecard published in full

Most hiring clients keep their weightings inside the platform. Worthington publishes its own, in a document written for its contractors and titled "Grading in ISNetworld," dated March 2020. Worthington is a manufacturer rather than a utility, and the numbers below belong to Worthington alone. The shape is what carries across.

One hundred points are available, split five ways.

Component	Points	Full marks
Safety statistics	30	Three-year average TRIR and DART both at or below the BLS rate
Experience modifier rate	30	EMR of 1.00 or below; 0 points above 1.20
EHS questionnaire	20	ISO 45001 certification, or 14 of 15 leading-indicator questions answered yes
Regulatory citations	10	No OSHA, EPA or MSHA citation in three years; all or nothing
Written programs	10	Average program score of 75 percent or more

The letters sit on those totals.

Grade	Minimum points
A	90
B	80
C	70
F	below 70, recorded as non-acceptable

Worthington's own bar is "a C grade or better to be authorized to work onsite." PG&E's bar on the same platform is A or B, which is the same letter grade read against a different threshold.

Two items sit outside the arithmetic. An accepted certificate of insurance and a signed Contractor Safety Requirements document are what the document calls showstoppers: "Neither of these items is assigned points for being accepted, but each will cause 100 points to be lost if not accepted." A contractor with a spotless three-year injury record and a certificate that expired last Tuesday holds an F. The certificate is read for its wording before it is accepted, and insurance and bonds covers what that wording has to say.

Note the last row of the first table. Written programs, the binders that take the longest to assemble, are worth 10 points of 100 on this card.

A written program is scored as a fraction of the elements it should contain

Worthington's document describes the review arithmetic directly:

If a program requires 6 standards and contains all 6, then the score is 100% If a program requires 6 standards and contains 4, then the score is 66%

The reviewer counts required elements present in the text. Which elements are required follows from the work types selected on the account, so the work type list is the grading key, chosen by the contractor before anything is reviewed.

PG&E publishes those strings. Its Qualified Contractors report, last updated September 8, 2026, carries 1,700 contractor rows under seven columns: contractor name, system ID, address, city, state, work types and ZIP. Forty-seven of those rows carry the work type "Services, Industrial - Tree Trimming and/or Clearing, Wood Chipping." Five carry "Services, Environmental - Vegetation Management" instead. Twenty carry the tree trimming string and nothing else; one general contractor carries it buried among dozens of other work types, each of which brings its own required programs.

Every column in that report describes who the company is and what work it does. The grade itself stays inside the platform, so the public artifact records only that a company cleared as of that date.

The statistics turn over every spring

A grade can move while the crews do exactly what they did last month, because the inputs are annual.

You must post the summary no later than February 1 of the year following the year covered by the records and keep the posting in place until April 30.

That is 29 CFR 1904.32(b)(6), the OSHA annual summary. Paragraph (b)(3) of the same section requires a company executive to certify that the summary is correct and complete, which is the signature that makes the number a record rather than an estimate.

Worthington's card requires three years of logs at setup and then "Annually, by March 1st, you will be required to upload the previous year's logs," and scores the three-year average. The window slides. A contractor graded in October on 2023 through 2025 is graded in March on 2024 through 2026, and a clean year drops off the back while a bad one stays. The same document requires written programs "validated or updated in ISN every 3 years," so a program accepted in 2023 comes due again in 2026.

For a buyer, this is the reason a grade printed in a bid package has a shelf life measured in months.

What ISN says the review does not decide

ISN's RAVS Usage Terms are explicit about the limits of the product:

RAVS should be used as a tool only, and Hiring Clients use RAVS at their own risk. Each Hiring Client retains ultimate liability and responsibility for determining the actual conformance of Contractors with applicable Hiring Client and regulatory requirements, and for managing, evaluating, and approving Contractors to perform services for such Hiring Client.

The same terms put the results "for informational purposes only," outside any use "as a substitute for professional advice or independent due diligence." They also place conformance itself back on the contractor: "Contractors are solely responsible for ensuring full conformance with all applicable Hiring Client and governmental requirements."

An A is a finding about documents and statistics submitted to a platform. Whether a span was cut to the distance the order called for, and whether the person who cut it held line clearance qualification, are recorded somewhere else. Those live in worker qualification records and in the unit's own documentation. A state regulator reviewing the same contracted work reads those records, as Energy Safety audits sets out.

The variance is the documented exception, and somebody signs it

Both PG&E and Worthington publish a route for a contractor who falls short. Section 3.5 of PG&E's Revision 5 contract requirements:

If Contractor or any Subcontractor does not meet the Pre-qualification requirements identified in Attachment 1: Contractor Safety Pre-Qualification Criteria, PG&E may, at its sole discretion, authorize Contractor or Contractor's proposed Subcontractors to perform Medium Risk Work or High Risk Work under PG&E's variance approval process.

The same paragraph gives PG&E the right to impose additional safety controls as a condition of the approval, and requires the contractor and its subcontractors to comply with those conditions "at no cost to PG&E."

Worthington's document sets out the limits its own variance carries. A variance is temporary, requires a risk mitigation plan, cannot be granted for deficiencies "that can easily be addressed by the contractor (such as missing required documents)," and cannot be applied at all unless both showstoppers are already in accepted status. A variance reaches a statistical history or an EMR. An unsigned form stays a deficiency.

Who pays for the grade

Section 3.4 of PG&E's Revision 5 contract requirements:

All costs associated with compliance with PG&E's Pre-Qualification requirements shall be at Contractor's sole cost and expense, including but not limited to all fees charged by PG&E's Safety Prequalification Contracted Administrator, as well as administrative and other costs associated with additional conditions PG&E imposes on the Work.

ISN is that administrator, named in the same document and described there as the party "previously referred to as the 'Third-Party Administrator' or 'TPA.'" ISN's FAQ sets the fee structure: "Contractors and suppliers pay an annual subscription fee and a one-time account setup fee per country based on the number of employees in the company. Employee count is based on the three-year average."

A prime that brings a two-person sub onto a PG&E right of way has put a recurring subscription and a setup fee on that sub's overhead, and the purchase order recovers it only where somebody negotiated a line for it. Where that cost lands is a pricing question, and unit price mechanics covers it.

Where this lands on a contract

Five things are worth writing down before the first crew mobilizes.

• Name the client and the document. "A or B with PG&E under SAFE-3006S" is verifiable in two clicks. "ISN certified" sends the evaluator back to the search box.

• Name the revision. SAFE-3006S is Rev 0 and its rescission note states that it "replaces the previously utilized contractor safety requirements document referenced in contracts as 'Based on SAFE-3001S.'" A contract signed before August 20, 2026 may still incorporate Revision 5 by reference, and the two documents differ.

• Check the risk classification against the matrix, not against the job title. Utility tree trimming, clearance work and chipping are High Risk, and a safety plan is required on top of the grade.

• Say which tiers carry the requirement and who pays. The classification follows the highest-risk task under the contract, subcontractors included, and PG&E requires its own written approval before a sub starts.

• Say what happens if the grade falls mid-term. SAFE-3006S requires the grade to be maintained, and section 12 reserves PG&E's right to stop, suspend, terminate or restrict work for safety non-compliance.

The grade is a gate that opens before the work and a condition that runs through it. A buyer who treats it as a snapshot taken at award will be surprised in March.

Further reading

• What prequalification evaluators actually check: The scored questionnaire a public agency runs alongside, or instead of, a third-party platform.

• Contractor scorecards after award: The performance measurement that starts once the prequalification grade has done its job.

• Line clearance qualification under Cal/OSHA: The worker qualification an A grade does not test.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a single ISNetworld grade a contractor can quote on a bid?

No. ISN configures requirements per hiring client. ISN's own description says requirements 'can be configured by location, level of risk, or specific designations,' and its October 23, 2025 release on the redesigned Scorecard refers to monitoring 'Hiring Client grades' in the plural. A contractor connected to six clients carries six grades. The checkable statement names the client and the standard: an A or B with PG&E under SAFE-3006S.

Does utility tree trimming count as high-risk work at PG&E?

Yes. PG&E's Enterprise Contractor Safety Matrix, SAFE-3001S Attachment 2, Rev 2, published June 20, 2024, lists 'Vegetation Management (including utility tree trimming, clearance work, and chipping)' under High Risk. The high-risk row requires ISN registration, connection to PG&E, an A or B grade, and a Programmatic or Project (Site) Specific Safety Plan. The matrix keeps 'Basic Landscaping services including standard lawn mowing, trimming, and pruning with hand tools' in Low Risk, with an explicit carve-out for vegetation management work, fall hazards and heavy equipment.

If a subcontractor does the climbing, does the prime's risk classification change?

It does. SAFE-3006S section 2.3 states that 'The assigned risk classification is based on the highest-risk work performed under the contract, including work performed by subcontractors.' Under PG&E's Rev 5 contract requirements, section 3.3, the prime also may not let a subcontractor start prequalification-required work without first obtaining written PG&E approval that the subcontractor has satisfied the requirements.

Can a grade fall after award without anything changing in the field?

Yes, on the annual statistics roll. 29 CFR 1904.32(b)(6) requires the OSHA 300A summary posted no later than February 1 and kept in place until April 30, and Worthington's published scorecard requires the previous year's logs uploaded by March 1 and scores a three-year average of TRIR and DART. A contractor graded in October on 2023 through 2025 is graded in March on 2024 through 2026, and a clean year rolls off the back of the window.

What happens when a contractor cannot reach the required grade before work has to start?

PG&E's Rev 5 contract requirements, section 3.5, allow PG&E at its sole discretion to authorize the work under a variance approval process, with additional safety controls imposed 'at no cost to PG&E.' Worthington's document sets out the same idea with limits: a variance is temporary, requires a risk mitigation plan, cannot be granted for deficiencies the contractor could easily fix such as missing documents, and cannot be applied unless both of its showstopper items are already accepted.