Professional Competence

Phil, Andy - quite right.

When in the past I had to deal with Environmental Health Officers within my role as H&S bod for a private company, one of them opened the first conversation to me with the line - "What health and safety qualifications do you have?" At the time I had loads of experience but no formal H&S qualifications. Once I had responded, her comment was - "Then why should anyone be listening to you?" which just underlined that my lack of qualification could be used to undermine my opinion or judgement if it was questioned. It could be certainly mentioned in court if I was giving evidence with a view to undermining my credibility. I have qualifications now!
However, it does need to be tempered at times. In another role I used to work for a government dept and visit funded educational providers to assess their H&S policies to ensure that they were suitable and sufficient(etc) . One of the H&S responsible persons I visited had no formal qualifications but had at least 20 years in his field - he is a teacher and rugby coach for the RFU - is a qualified coach, physio, teacher etc etc and despite not having a formal H&S qualification it was obvious following discussion that his understanding of H&S and of his role was outstanding. Relevant, knowledge, skills and experience indeed.

Thankyou Andy, In complete agreement.

Competence cab be difficult to quantify if you rely on subjective opinion. Someone who has been doing the job for x number of years will believe they are competent by virtue of time served. However, this is only one part of the equation regardless of industry.

Both the HSE and British Standards have defined competence and provide guidance on the very subject. The key words are “…relevant knowledge, skills and experience…ability to apply these appropriately while recognising your limits…and necessary training to acquire and maintain….”

You should expect anyone with a specific reference for H&S to have some form of basic IOSH or NEBOSH certificate (or equivalent). Without basic training at the very minimum how can you expect to carry out a function? Continuous Professional Development is very much part and parcel of on going training. Because you undertook a course x number of years ago does not mean that you still have that skill set or knowledge. Regarding FIRE Health & Safety PAS79 written by Colin Todd (available through British Standards) provides a table for risk assessor competence which can equally be applied to most other types of risk assessor. It breaks it down into EDUCATION, TRAINING & EXPERIENCE.

3rd party certification and external auditing & assistance should be sought if doubt exits particularly for bigger organisations and more complex risks.

Andy (Fire Safety Officer Associates)

Well-note, if you can walk up a flight of stairs and bend down to pick up a pencil you are fit to work and if you can't then you is on incapacity innit......

Functionality and competence another matter and that depends, at this time, on exeprience and/or training or qualifications although, it is being suggested that elf-an-safety practitioners should be qualified and then if qualified will need to belong to a qualifying body maintaining standards and carry some "professional bonding" by way of insurance should they fuff-up the job and get sued.

In da meantime employers problem of how vulnerable they choose to leave themselves by positively undertaking due diligence and appointing a numpty who maybe all talk and no do......

From how I understand it, there is no legal requirement for a qualification.

A company I know of had a seminar, where the maintenance manager attended, the people giving the seminar were not accredited to any H&S organisation, such as IOSH.

However, The maintenance manager isnt the responsible person, and there is no person listed on the 58112 (need to know) poster, the assumed responsible person didn't attend, and nor do they hold any qualifications/certificates either.

Is there a minimum level of qualification that needs to be attained before a member of staff or consultant can be considered competent to advise or manage the H&S department of a large company 200+ employees?

On attending a course recently I was shocked that a consultant for a large brewery could not answer IOSH managing safely level questions and that the H&S Manager for a large group of companies employing 5000+ employees had no qualifications and was the sole member of the H&S team.