IOSH is renewing its call for health and safety consultants to be subject to a formal programme of accreditation. The President of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health was speaking at an IOSH lunch at the House of Lords last week.
John Holden, President of IOSH, claimed that accreditation of health and safety professionals would help to make health and safety more trusted and more respected. He said it would also strike a major blow in the fight to quash the “silly myths that have come to surround health and safety”.
He commented:
“The official guidance to the law tells businesses they must get a ‘competent assistant… at an appropriate level’ to help them with their health and safety. Yet employers and recruiters are left to guess what ‘competence’ actually means. Shockingly, at the moment, anyone can claim to be a health and safety ‘adviser’, without any qualifications or experience.”
He added:
“This possible playground for poor advice is potentially very threatening to workers, whose lives and long-term health can be put at risk; to businesses, in terms of wasted time and money; and to people whose image of health and safety is formed by negative media coverage of some poor decisions dressed up as ‘health and safety'.”
IOSH is currently developing a pilot accreditation scheme for the health and safety industry. Before the election, IOSH asked the three main parties for their views on a register of accredited health and safety consultants. They received broad support for the idea.
Labour said:
“Building competence through an organisation will help generate an understanding of what information, skills and training are necessary to ensure safe and healthy working practices. This will help people identify when they need to seek advice. Accordingly, we are very supportive of efforts to establish an accreditation scheme for health and safety professionals.”
The Conservative Party commented:
“This is an important contribution to the debate on the future of health and safety.” (The party was reluctant to comment further until after the publication of Lord Young’s current party review of health and safety).
The Liberal Democrats said:
“We support IOSH’s proposals for an online register of health and safety consultants. There is a need to streamline and make transparent the qualifications of people working in this area.”
David Jones, CDM2007.org’s Editor-in-Chief comments,
“We fully support the IOSH call for proper robust accreditation to be set up in the industry. Only by having a sound system of third-party accredited proof of competence that confirms a person is fit to undertake specific tasks and duties within the industry can we hope to ensure that safety is given the proper consideration it must have.”
“Everyone who leaves their home to go to a place of work MUST have complete confidence to know those persons and organisations who provide and control the place of work are competent to keep them all safe to return home again unharmed.”
The COMPETENCE REGISTRY © 2010 has been developed by the team at CDM2007.org and have made this completely FREE to the whole of the Construction Industry to use as a central place to register all the relevant factors and elements that a professional needs to be able to prove they are competent and have the necessary knowledge and experience to do what is expected of them.
This completely new innovation was launched earlier this year ~ the auto third-party accreditation online is a foolproof way that professionals can have their records of all learning, experience, CPD activity, ability, and background certified by others … what better way exists to provide the proof!
CDM2007.org has been providing online modular training since 2007 for professionals within the construction industry to gain their essential understanding of the knowledge required to undertake the role of the CDM Coordinator or CDM-C. The training course is arranged in 30 modules of holistic eLearning presented online in multi-media together with a complete set of downloadable library books with each module. The duration of each module is around one hour each to enable the student to have positive time management in a busy working life. After each module the student takes an online test to ensure complete learning and understanding of the learning points of the particular module and the result is given instantly.
Upon successfully completing the course, students will graduate onto the CDM2007.org CDM-C Register and be able then to proudly use the designatory letters M-CDM-C after their name as a clear proof of their competent achievement ... clear proof of having passed all 30 modules and having exceeded a certified "pass" of more than 70% of 210 questions!
David Jones further comments ...
"I believe that the industry MUST have the proper accreditation for those that undertake the CDM-C role that is truly task-specific ~ not simply a one-fit-all registered membership (simply because it may be listed in Appendix 4 of the ACoP as an example ... ) that implies the CDM-C can undertake the CDM Coordinator role for anything"
"CDM-C's need to be able to prove they are capable to lead the CDM process with complete knowledge and understanding ~ commissioning clients who appoint CDM-C's must also understand what the term competence actually means too"
"Our new Competence Registry (c) 2010 actually now provides all CDM-C's with the ability to prove to their clients and the rest of the procurement team they are competent ~ and, further, by capturing the relevant data and having it accredited by appropriate third parties now provides CDM-C's with the robust means to show they go beyond just the first level at Appendix 4 criteria and can now prove they are truly meeting the criteria to be competent to Appendix 5 too! ... "
Ed.
