Competent person

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A competent person is designated by a company to ensure that the company's health and safety responsibilities are being met. [1] [2] This may be a legal obligation required of the company, to ensure that the business understands, and can act on, the health and safety risks that might occur during their particular type of work. [2]

Contents

United Kingdom

The forerunner to the Competent Person Scheme in the UK was the 1991 Building Regulations Act, which enabled gas-heating appliance installers to self-certify that their work was safe and legal, rather than needing external checking. Then from 2002 to 2010, a series of Competent Person Schemes were implemented widely in the building sector to enable builders to self-certify that their work meets regulations in eighteen different fields. [3] By 2019, an estimated 85% of all building work requiring the notification of building control bodies was self-certified, and therefore no longer subject to external inspection. [4] In 2012, a UK government report found that 'although the reports received indicate that most schemes have been operating effectively and have proved to be a success, the latest report in 2009 found that some schemes were not complying fully with their conditions of authorisation or achieving a sufficiently high level of compliance with the Building Regulations'. [4] [3]

Recognition of competence is defined as requiring "sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities" to be able to effectively oversee health and safety in the business, [2] although specialised industries may have additional, more specific requirements. [5]

For building trades, there are, as of February 2020, eighteen Competent Person Schemes including: [6]

United States

While the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) does not have specific standards about competent persons, several industry-specific standards do have requirements for the designated competent persons to follow. [7] These standards address multiple aspects of construction, gear certification, longshoring, shipyards, as well as general industry.

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a large regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. Congress established the agency under the Occupational Safety and Health Act OSH Act, which President Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 29, 1970. OSHA's mission is to "assure safe and healthy working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education, and assistance". The agency is also charged with enforcing a variety of whistleblower statutes and regulations. OSHA's workplace safety inspections have been shown to reduce injury rates and injury costs without adverse effects to employment, sales, credit ratings or firm survival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Safety</span> State of being secure from harm, injury, danger, or other non-desirable outcomes

Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Professional diving</span> Underwater diving where divers are paid for their work

Professional diving is underwater diving where the divers are paid for their work. The procedures are often regulated by legislation and codes of practice as it is an inherently hazardous occupation and the diver works as a member of a team. Due to the dangerous nature of some professional diving operations, specialized equipment such as an on-site hyperbaric chamber and diver-to-surface communication system is often required by law, and the mode of diving for some applications may be regulated.

Occupational noise is the amount of acoustic energy received by an employee's auditory system when they are working in the industry. Occupational noise, or industrial noise, is often a term used in occupational safety and health, as sustained exposure can cause permanent hearing damage. Occupational noise is considered an occupational hazard traditionally linked to loud industries such as ship-building, mining, railroad work, welding, and construction, but can be present in any workplace where hazardous noise is present.

Construction site safety is an aspect of construction-related activities concerned with protecting construction site workers and others from death, injury, disease or other health-related risks. Construction is an often hazardous, predominantly land-based activity where site workers may be exposed to various risks, some of which remain unrecognized. Site risks can include working at height, moving machinery and materials, power tools and electrical equipment, hazardous substances, plus the effects of excessive noise, dust and vibration. The leading causes of construction site fatalities are falls, electrocutions, crush injuries, and caught-between injuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupational hygiene</span> Management of workplace health hazards

Occupational hygiene is the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, control, and confirmation of protection from hazards at work that may result in injury, illness, or affect the well being of workers. These hazards or stressors are typically divided into the categories biological, chemical, physical, ergonomic and psychosocial. The risk of a health effect from a given stressor is a function of the hazard multiplied by the exposure to the individual or group. For chemicals, the hazard can be understood by the dose response profile most often based on toxicological studies or models. Occupational hygienists work closely with toxicologists for understanding chemical hazards, physicists for physical hazards, and physicians and microbiologists for biological hazards. Environmental and occupational hygienists are considered experts in exposure science and exposure risk management. Depending on an individual's type of job, a hygienist will apply their exposure science expertise for the protection of workers, consumers and/or communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Confined space</span> Space with limited entry and egress and not suitable for human inhabitants

A confined space is a space with limited entry and egress and not suitable for human inhabitants. An example is the interior of a storage tank, occasionally entered by maintenance workers but not intended for human occupancy. Hazards in a confined space often include harmful dust or gases, asphyxiation, submersion in liquids or free-flowing granular solids, electrocution, or entrapment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lockout–tagout</span> Isolation of dangerous equipment.

Lock out, tag out (LOTO) is a safety procedure used to ensure that dangerous equipment is properly shut off and not able to be started up again prior to the completion of maintenance or repair work. It requires that hazardous energy sources be "isolated and rendered inoperative" before work is started on the equipment in question. The isolated power sources are then locked and a tag is placed on the lock identifying the worker and reason the LOTO is placed on it. The worker then holds the key for the lock, ensuring that only they can remove the lock and start the equipment. This prevents accidental startup of equipment while it is in a hazardous state or while a worker is in direct contact with it.

Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response is a set of guidelines produced and maintained by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration which regulates hazardous waste operations and emergency services in the United States and its territories. With these guidelines, the U.S. government regulates hazardous wastes and dangerous goods from inception to disposal.

Environment (E), health (H) and safety (S),EHS is an acronym for the set that studies and implements the practical aspects of protecting the environment and maintaining health and safety at occupation. In simple terms it is what organizations must do to make sure that their activities do not cause harm to anyone. Commonly, quality - quality assurance and quality control - is adjoined to form the company division known as HSQE.

Workplace health surveillance or occupational health surveillance (U.S.) is the ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and dissemination of exposure and health data on groups of workers. The Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its 12th Session in 1995 defined an occupational health surveillance system as "a system which includes a functional capacity for data collection, analysis and dissemination linked to occupational health programmes".

A safety management system (SMS) is designed to manage safety risk in the workplace, occupational safety being defined as the reduction of risk to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable or ALARP to prevent people getting hurt.

Accredited Crane Operator Certification OSHA regulation 29 CFR 1926 Subpart CC, released August 9, 2010, requires crane operators involved in construction to be certified by an accredited certification provider by November 10, 2014. An operator is defined as any person operating the equipment. To be accredited, certification providers must be accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting agency, defined as "an organization that, due to its independence and expertise, is widely recognized as competent to accredit testing organizations. Examples of such accrediting agencies include, but are not limited to, the National Commission for Certifying Agencies and the American National Standards Institute." This is the first time certification by an accredited certification provider has been required on a national level, although individual states and cities have required crane operator certification as far back as 2000. The new OSHA standards make the completion of this requirement an important topic of knowledge for the crane and lifting industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diving supervisor</span> Professional diving team leader responsible for safety

The diving supervisor is the professional diving team member who is directly responsible for the diving operation's safety and the management of any incidents or accidents that may occur during the operation; the supervisor is required to be available at the control point of the diving operation for the diving operation's duration, and to manage the planned dive and any contingencies that may occur. Details of competence, requirements, qualifications, registration and formal appointment differ depending on jurisdiction and relevant codes of practice. Diving supervisors are used in commercial diving, military diving, public safety diving and scientific diving operations.

Operations Plus WMD is a training level in dealing with hazardous materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupational safety and health</span> Field concerned with the safety, health and welfare of people at work

Occupational safety and health (OSH), also commonly referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS), occupational health, or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at work. These terms also refer to the goals of this field, so their use in the sense of this article was originally an abbreviation of occupational safety and health program/department etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diver training</span> Processes by which people develop the skills and knowledge to dive safely underwater

Diver training is the set of processes through which a person learns the necessary and desirable skills to safely dive underwater within the scope of the diver training standard relevant to the specific training programme. Most diver training follows procedures and schedules laid down in the associated training standard, in a formal training programme, and includes relevant foundational knowledge of the underlying theory, including some basic physics, physiology and environmental information, practical skills training in the selection and safe use of the associated equipment in the specified underwater environment, and assessment of the required skills and knowledge deemed necessary by the certification agency to allow the newly certified diver to dive within the specified range of conditions at an acceptable level of risk. Recognition of prior learning is allowed in some training standards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lifting equipment</span> Equipment that can be used to lift and lower loads

Lifting equipment, also known as lifting gear, is a general term for any equipment that can be used to lift and lower loads. Types of lifting equipment includes heavy machinery such as the patient lift, overhead cranes, forklifts, jacks, building cradles, passenger lifts, and can also include smaller accessories such as chains, hooks, and rope. Generally, this equipment is used to move material that cannot be moved with manual labor, and are tools used in most work environments, such as warehouses, and is a requirement for most construction projects, such as bridges and buildings. This equipment can also be used to equip a larger number of packages and goods, requiring less persons to move material. Lifting equipment includes any form of equipment that is used for vertical lifting, and equipment used to move material horizontally is not considered lifting equipment, nor is equipment designed to support. As lifting equipment can be dangerous to use, it is a common subject of safety regulations in most countries, and heavy machinery usually requires certified workers to limit workplace injury.

A diver training standard is a document issued by a certification, registration regulation or quality assurance agency, that describes the prerequisites for participation, the aim of the training programme, the specific minimum competences that a candidate must display to be assessed as competent, and the minimum required experience that must be recorded before the candidate can be registered or certified at a specific grade by the agency. A standard is a description of the quality required of a product, or a way of doing something that has usually been derived from the experience of experts in a specific field. The purpose is to provide a reliable method for people to share a reasonably consistent expectation regarding the scope and quality of the product or service. Training standards allow objective comparison between the training provided by various agencies and the competence indicated by certification or registration to the specific standard, though in most cases, training and competence may exceed the minimum requirement much of the time, and variation between newly certified divers can be considerable, partly due to differences in the training, and partly due to qualities of the candidate. Training standards may narrowly prescribe the training, or may concentrate on assessment of exit level competence, and allow recognition of prior learning based on various forms of evidence. To be useful, a training standard must be sufficiently specific to allow agreement on the requirements by most readers reasonably competent in the field, including the instructors, assessors, and learners who must use it, the employers of persons trained, the potential customers, and any quality assurance personnel who may need to enforce it. A training standard may be linked to a code of practice referring to how the training should be carried out.

Refresher training is an aspect of retraining taken by a person already qualified or previously assessed as competent in a field with the intention of updating skills and/or knowledge to a changed standard, or providing the opportunity to ensure that no important skills or knowledge have been lost due to lack of use. In industry it is also used to upgrade performance of personnel faced with workplace changes or who use obsolete, deprecated, or outdated work procedures, as a method for improving productivity, customer service, employee satisfaction and retention, and workplace health and safety.

References

  1. "Safety and Health Topics Competent Person Occupational Safety and Health Administration". www.osha.gov. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  2. 1 2 3 "The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999". www.legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 2018-03-14.
  3. 1 2 Changes to the Conditions of Authorisation for Building Regulations Competent Person Self-certification Schemes: Final impact assessment (London: Department for Communities and Local Government, June 2012), pp. 3-5. ISBN   9781409834328.
  4. 1 2 Hodkinson, Stuart (2019). Safe as Houses: Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy after Grenfell. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 44. ISBN   9781526141866.
  5. "What is Competence? - Competence in health and safety". www.hse.gov.uk. Retrieved 2018-03-14.
  6. Gov.uk https://www.gov.uk/guidance/competent-person-scheme-current-schemes-and-how-schemes-are-authorised#current-schemes
  7. "Safety and Health Topics | Competent Person - OSHA Standards | Occupational Safety and Health Administration". www.osha.gov. Retrieved 2019-04-27.