....CDM2007.org first Blog
Welcome - I am David Jones and this is my blog – or, to put it into context, my thoughts, rants, visions, feelings, views, and, most of all – my direct link to you … and, as I am part of a special team of folks here at Bromley that have made all of this CDM2007.org possible – this link will effectively be the voice of our CDM community …so, I do want to share my thoughts and ideas with you and, importantly, I do want you to understand you can express your views and comments back to me too …
Let me tell you about my Career
… I tend to put my career in three parts – first early years were spent in civil engineering in the UK and some trips abroad working on some international major projects … tunnels, bridges, dams, culverts, towers, ski-jumps, a veritable tonka-toy existence for a young guy enjoying life and seeing the world – well, the grubby building sites of the world that is, heavy sloppy concrete poured into moulds supported high off the ground does tend to focus your mind upon safety – seen the lot too – rickety timber supports and scaffolds, heath-robinson contraptions moving it around – even saw a tower crane with busted slewing gear being literally pulled each way using two gangs of labourers pulling on steel ropes when a guy blew a whistle – that was some time before ‘whistle-blowers’ got protection in UK law and, anyway, it was out in the middle-east …
… middle part of my career was spent developing my professional skills in design and project management working with a number of architectural practices, surveying firms, running my own development practice for a while then took over the chief development surveyor post in a social housing association at the early days of the mid-wars estates renewals programme in social housing … I suppose that brought me into the third part of my career …
… working in three local councils and networking provided me a valuable insight into a range of corporate models and regimes – indeed, the range has been quite interesting – best value, CCT, TUPE, ALMOs, unitary, client-side, in-house consultancy side, reorganisations, DLOs, etc.... … eventually, a reorganisation gave me the opportunity to take over the role of managing a multi-disciplinary construction team during the latest consultation on CDM when I was able to develop safety culture and understanding in the team.
Today
… the buzz-word around is “competence” … it’s all about complying with Appendix 4 - but I can’t seem to find a good definition of “competence” …
… the great award-winning techie team here at Bromley have now created a brand new platform for this CDM2007.org website with great functionality – giving us a great place to have some real deep discussions [and, I hope, opportunity for some lighter stuff too] … but, first, can we concentrate on “competence” … tell me, what does it actually mean? … what does it actually ‘look like’? … what is the ‘shape’ of “competence” ? … define “competence” … how does a duty holder actually ‘prove’ “competence” to the other duty holders? … is a simple test enough? … is membership of a professional body enough? … being on a register – is that enough? … if a judge in a court asked you “are you competent?” how would you prove it? – too late if you’ve got it wrong eh? …
...If you replied to the judge... "governor I may not be able to prove that I am competent, but I can prove that I am NOT incompetent"...
Would that be enough? let me know what you think.
Later...
